Does Heaven Listen?
by Milareppa
Summary: An ancient god is rising in the heart of Brooklyn, determined to avenge a forgotten hurt. Only the Ghostbusters stand between him and the total destruction of humanity but this time even they think they've bitten off more than they can chew. [Ch13 added]
1. In the Beginning

**Does Heaven Listen?**

_**"Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven," Rabindranath Tagore.**_

**Prelude: _In the Beginning._**

_"In the beginning thou, O Lord, didst lay the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest: and they all shall wax old as a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them, and they shall be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail." -- Psalms 101:25-28._

"Alec, is that everything?"

Alec jumped down off the truck with a grunt and looked back at the carefully bagged and potted plants. It had taken them three weeks to transport all the delicate, valuable vegetation to their new home and at last an end was in sight. He sighed and rubbed his back wearily then looked at his dishevelled companion. "Aside from those two cedars, we got 'em all."

Uneasy, his colleague glanced back at the huge mansion behind them. "They're still on the porch."

"No problem, Tim," Alec said easily, also watching the house. He didn't make a move to collect them either.

The cedars were amongst the most valuable plants in the entire collection and the two botanists should have been thrilled to be handling them. Tim, especially, loved anything to do with trees and would normally have found it impossible to pry himself away from them. Now, however, he was staring at the old house with apprehension, clearly unwilling to be the one to go there and retrieve them.

Alec couldn't blame him; he didn't want to do it either. He wasn't a superstitious man but there was definitely something... _wrong_ with those cedars. When he was alone with them, he felt as though he was being watched. Out of the corner of his eye he had occasionally seen movement only to discover, upon turning around, that there was nothing visible. At times, he had even spotted the branches swaying gently as if in a breeze. While that was normal for trees, these plants had been standing inside the house, nowhere near any drafts. Worst of all, the swaying had caused the leaves to rustle; like the trees where _whispering _to each other.

_Unnatural_. That was the word he wanted. The trees were just plain unnatural.

Unfortunately, as the prize exhibits, they were required to go along with the rest of the collection and there were very specific instructions for transporting them. There was no way to leave them behind, no reason to forget their existence.

Alec sighed at his illogical train of thought. "Okay. I'll be right back," he squared his shoulders and started up the driveway sternly telling himself that he was a scientist, his fears were irrational and they were only a couple of trees. He worked with trees every day. Trees were plants - they weren't motile, they didn't think and they certainly didn't talk. Something deep down inside him though, something primal, refused to be convinced.

When he arrived at the porch, he could see the plants weren't alone. Standing between them was a small, thin gentleman of Middle Eastern descent and ancient years. He watched the botanist's approach with a hawk-like gaze, fingers twining around themselves like spider's legs. Alec sighed. "Okay, Mr. Jabbaar. We need to move the cedars now," he braced himself for the argument that was to come and wasn't disappointed as the bushy eyebrows puckered together in a tight frown and the dark eyes grew even darker.

"I have told you before, Doctor Newman. _Cedrus libani_ is a moody plant. It's absolutely imperative you disturb them as little as possible."

"I appreciate your concern, Mr. Jabbaar," Alec said with forced patience. "But these aren't the first _Cedrus_ we've looked after. We know what we're doing and we have no intention of insulting Doctor Austin's generous contribution by harming his plants."

The Asian man sighed in frustration and wondered if he had ever met such a stubborn man before in his life. Of course he had, he realised a moment later. His brother. That was the problem, he decided; as well intentioned as this botanist was, he was as stubbornly optimistic as his brother was. The little gardener hated optimism. He considered it an unwarranted waste of time and viewed those infected by it with a deep suspicion. Optimists, he knew from experience, rarely listened to reason. In fact, they had a tendency to make up their own kind of reason. It was maddening. He glared at the botanist. "These are unlike any _Cedrus_ you have ever encountered. That I am certain of. You _must_ make sure they remain potted in this soil."

"The soil you import from the Levant," Alec nodded patiently.

_Definitely_ like his brother, the little gardener thought uncharitably. He scowled at the botanist, suspecting it would do no good, but trying anyway. "I am not speaking for the sake of my own health but for the sake of yours," he said flatly. "These trees have their demands. Heed them or reap the consequences."

Alec scowled. If the man in front of him hadn't looked so old, so frail, he would have taken that as a physical threat. He bit down on his tongue and forced himself to remain civil. "Sure, Mr. Jabbaar. They'll be in good hands. I promise you." He heaved the trolley they were loaded on into motion and began to push them back to the truck. He didn't look back and was relieved to realise that the gardener wasn't following him down the long driveway.

"Old man give you grief?" Tim grinned.

"Never met anyone so obsessed with trees," Alec grunted as they heaved the heavy plants onto the truck. He paused and wiped his brow, glaring at Tim. "Except, maybe you."

Tim grinned. "Hey, Nasim isn't that bad when you get to know him. He's just a worrier."

"I'll take your word for it," Alec sighed. "You know Sally wants these replanted straight into the earth when we get back?"

Tim nodded.

"It's just too expensive to keep shipping soil back and forth Lebanon for the sake of two trees that don't really need special treatment."

Tim nodded again.

"These trees won't have a problem with that?"

Tim shook his head. "We'll introduce the new soil slowly so there's no root infection or shock but it shouldn't be a problem. There's plenty of examples of _Cedrus_ growing in American soil. Quite happily so."

"Good," grunted Alec, hopping into the driving seat. "Then let's go." He waved once to the old gardener and put the vehicle into gear. Nasim Jabbaar didn't wave back. He didn't even watch them leave. Alec shrugged, not particularly surprised, and got on with the job of driving.

The botanists never noticed the two young cedars in the back twist and shiver as they began to stretch.


	2. When Two Hobbies Collide

**Chapter 1: _When Two Hobbies Collide_**

_"Mistakes are at the very base of human thought feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack of being wrong, we could never get anything useful done." -- Lewis Thomas._

"Brooklyn Botanic Gardens would like to present the grand opening of the Charles Austin Memorial Garden. Dedicated to the inspiring work of local landscape artist, Doctor Charles Austin, every plant has been bequeathed to us in his last will and testament. A noted botanist, Doctor Austin was considered a pioneer at integrating oriental trees into American urban regeneration schemes for over 30 years until his untimely death from cancer three months ago..." Janine paused and placed the leaflet down, looking at the four faces in front of her. Her carefully manicured fingernails tapped the desk in front of her expectantly.

Three humans and a single Class V free-roaming vapour exchanged dubious looks with each other. "And you want _all_ of us to go with you?" Winston asked uncertainly.

The secretary raised one slim eyebrow. "That's what I said," she replied coolly.

"Well, you know I'll never say anything bad about God's green earth but don't you think I'd be a bit out of place in there?"

"Yeah, Janine." Ray agreed. "Look what happened the last time we hung around plants for any length of time."

"Your apartment nearly got eaten by a geranium," Winston stated.

"Yeah!" Slimer was nodding vigorously.

"Oh, guys. It was possessed. I don't blame you for that!" Janine's head lowered slightly, her glasses slipping to the end of her nose. Her eyes were a barely visible crystal blue crescent underneath her eyelashes and yet successfully managed to pin all three men to the floor.

Ray and Winston squirmed uncomfortably, wondering if she was aware of how devastating that expression was. "We could take Ecto-1," she continued. "You could test out the new engine you gave her."

Obviously wavering, Ray and Winston looked at each other. "She's got a point," Ray said cautiously.

"She's _always_ got a point," Winston complained, glaring at the secretary who artfully looked away. He could see her smile at the sigh that escaped him. "Alright, we've been waiting forever to check out that engine. Now's as good a time as any."

She turned to the unusually silent third member of the little trio, expecting him to be harder to convince than the others.

Peter was leaning against the side of her desk watching the interactions with a steady gaze. There was a flicker of amusement in the far depths of his eyes, a hint of analytical professionalism as he turned his attention to Janine. The woman had no doctorates but she could psych out the four Ghostbusters like a professional shrink when she felt like it. Ray and Winston may not be entirely certain whether her vulnerability just now had been deliberate or accidental but Peter was under no such illusions. Janine might not have had the academic proof but she was as intelligent as any of them and was as good at manipulating people as he was.

Watching her brace herself for the battle she was obviously expecting, he shrugged nonchalantly. "Sure. Why not? I got nothing better to do," he said easily. Pretending not to notice how his unexpected answer derailed whatever argument she had been preparing, he pushed away from the desk and began to walk off. He stopped as he realised four sets of eyes were staring incredulously at him. "What?" he demanded innocently.

"Um... Peter? You really want to come to a memorial garden opening?" Ray asked cautiously.

"It was advertised on TV last night," Peter said in an off-hand tone. "You should have seen the chick who'll be giving the talk. Legs all the way up to her neck!" He grinned like a cat, shoved his hands in his pocket and strolled off to his seat, whistling something that sounded suspiciously like _'Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree.'_

Janine rolled her eyes and rose. She should have known that would be his motivation for attending. "I'm going to get coffee," she said tartly and walked off.

The three men watched her disappear up the stairs then looked at each other. "Man, I'd give big bucks to know how Egon can resist that woman. Those eyes of hers are lethal weapons!" Winston shook his head in disbelief.

"Yeah," Slimer agreed mournfully, floating over to Peter. "Big bucks!"

"I'll bet Egon's noticed that." Peter's tone was deliberately casual and he watched with pleasure as they took the bait, both of them suddenly concentrating on him as if he was the only thing in the world that existed.

Many scientists had berated Peter for being a poor scientist, a maverick that refused to adhere to the logical principles and processes upon which his calling was built. Maverick he supposed he was but he had accepted years ago that human beings did not conform to the artificial construct of scientific methodology and so he had made a conscious decision not to do so either. He hadn't trained in psychology because he wanted to learn how people ticked. He had become a psychologist to prove that he _already knew_.

Plenty of scientists, including Egon, had bemoaned the fact that Peter's scientific training never seemed to switch on but what even his overachieving friend had failed to understand was that Peter had never switched _off_. To an actor, all the world was a stage. To Peter, all the world was a lab and he played the people around him with the same detached pleasure other scientists only experienced in a sterile room surrounded by gadgets.

While it made Peter a lot better at his job than most people realised he was also distantly aware that was also a weakness. He was now so good at playing the game it had become instinctive; he wasn't sure who the real Peter Venkman was anymore. Sometimes, it even bothered him.

But not today. Today he knew what he was doing and he was enjoying the effect it was having on his friends.

"Okay, what do you know?" Winston demanded.

He shrugged. "Same as you," he replied easily, a hint of mischief in his eyes.

"C'mon, Peter!" Ray tried. "You can't leave us hanging like that. What do you know?"

The psychologist's grin widened, milking their curiosity for all it was worth. "I'll bet you five bucks that if she turns that cute little pout on him he'll cave faster than we did."

"No fair!" Ray protested, knowing full well that Peter was playing with them but unable to resist responding anyway. "If you know something..."

Peter laughed. "I've only seen what you guys have seen," he watched them stare at him suspiciously, as if trying to work out whether or not he was telling the truth. It didn't matter to him that he actually was telling the truth. The secretary's feelings for the physicist were obvious and always had been. The physicist had never discouraged her attention and on numerous occasions he - rather than Janine - had been the one to initiate such gestures. All three men now crowded around Peter's desk could think of many occasions when Egon had been more interested in Janine's safety and well being than in his own. Peter was in absolutely no doubt the interest was there but whether or not the physicist had finally acted on it was something not even he was sure of.

The recent revelation that a _Makeoveris lotsabuck_ had been secretly corrupting their secretary's soul over a period of several years had come as a horrifying shock to them all. Along with the knowledge that they had simply stumbled upon the truth by accident, was the realisation that they had awakened to the threat almost too late to prevent Janine being forever claimed by the creature's twisted snares. None of the Ghostbusters had raised the subject with each other, or with Janine; they were still too shocked, there was still too much guilt that no-one had seen it occurring right under their noses. There _had_ been some kind of private confrontation between Egon and Janine, Peter knew, but the nature of the confrontation and its outcome was currently unknown to him.

Judging by their behaviour, however, Ray and Winston didn't know any more than he did. He wasn't certain whether he was amused or disappointed but he definitely wasn't surprised. The mystery that was Egon and Janine's relationship apparently remained intact and that's all the psychologist had been interested in uncovering. Maybe it wasn't yet time for the subject to be discussed by any of them. He grinned maddeningly at his two friends and then jumped with a curse as Slimer suddenly spun above him, coating the three Ghostbusters and his desk in ectoplasm.

"Eeeeegon!" the little ghost yelled in delight, as the front door swung shut with a loud thump. Egon strolled over to them, eyeing the little green ghost warily. Slimer slid to a stop in front of the physicist. "Hi Egon!" He darted around the physicist's head but didn't touch him.

"How do you _do_ that!" Peter demanded, wiping slime off himself.

"Are you kidding?" Winston exclaimed. "Not even Slimer would dare mess up that hair!"

Ray laughed. "Nah, Winston, you got it all wrong. He's too scared to approach it. I know I am!"

Egon walked over to the filing cabinet behind Janine's desk and began rummaging through one of the drawers with the martyred expression of someone who was used to being teased about his hair. Slimer threw the engineer a reproachful look. "Raaaaay!" he objected.

Ray grinned. "Sorry, Spud. I'm not teasing _you_."

Slimer smiled and floated up towards Egon's shoulders, babbling excitedly and unintelligibly. Even Ray, who normally had an almost supernatural ability to decipher the little ghost's peculiar speech, couldn't work out what he was saying. The physicist gave Slimer an appraising stare then turned to the others. "You're taking him to the botanical centre?" he asked.

"You understood that?" Winston sounded astonished.

"Not really," Egon confessed. "I made out the word 'plants' however and assumed it referred to this." He picked up the leaflet Janine had been reading to them earlier. Slimer nodded energetically and bobbed in the air in front of them.

"Slimer, you better not be dripping all over my desk!" Janine snapped from behind him. Slimer yelped and dived behind Egon. She put her mug down and glanced suspiciously at her desk and chair. Seeing it was clear of ectoplasm, she relaxed. "Hi, Egon."

"Good morning, Janine." He returned her leaflet with an understated, and rather formal, flourish.

"What do you think?" she asked immediately.

His eyebrows lifted. "Of what?"

"The rest of us are going. You should come too." She had a determined look in her eyes that made Winston and Ray grin. It was obvious she wasn't planning on accepting any excuses from Egon today.

"I have already made plans to attend," he informed her.

"You have?" Peter looked surprised. "Didn't think you were that much of a plant boy, Egon."

Egon frowned at him. "Part of Doctor Austin's donation include several rare Homobasidiomycetae species."

"Oh man, he must be the only guy in New York who would go to a plant show just to see mould," Winston groaned.

"In America," Janine muttered.

"Fungi." Egon corrected Winston succinctly.

"Hey, Janine, I thought you _liked_ plants?" Ray couldn't resist. He had both Winston and Peter between him and Janine; he was fairly certain he would have advanced warning if she tried to attack him.

The secretary rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right. I like _plants_. That's why I _hate _fungi!" She suddenly glared at Egon as if he had somehow done something wrong. It caught Ray by surprise and, judging by the mystified expression on the physicist's face, Egon was just as startled.

She stalked across to Egon, eyes dangerous. An instinct for self-preservation kicking in, Egon backed away until he felt the file cabinet pressing into his back. Although he had become used to being pursued by her, he wasn't used to seeing her direct the full force of her wrath at him; he was usually spared the greater part of her mood swings by what the others often claimed was a clear act of favouritism. While he pretended indifference in front of his colleagues, it was a status he privately enjoyed. Having seen how devastating her temper could be on others, however, he was completely certain this was not going to be at all pleasant.

"Man, I know that look," Winston commented casually to Peter and Ray.

"Yeah. Wonder what he's done?" Ray replied, grinning. "It's gotta be bad. She usually reserves that expression for you, Peter."

"Hey, what can I say?" Peter spread his hands. "I'm her boss, it's in the job description!"

"I bet it's not in his," Winston nodded in Egon's direction, eyes twinkling.

"Guys, you _aren't_ helping," Egon muttered. "Janine?"

She stopped just in front of him, close enough to crowd him but far enough away that she could glare at him without his greater height destroying the effect she wanted to create.

"So, Egon. For a hobby you collect spores, moulds and fungi?" Her voice was dripping with venom. "That's not an invitation to answer!" She snapped as he opened his mouth to respond. He clamped it shut again. She leaned forward slightly. "Does that include powdery mildew?"

He eyed her warily and swiftly calculated several responses. Most of his standard scientifically correct answers would probably make her even angrier so he decided for a more casual one. "Yes."

"Powdery mildew that likes begonias maybe?" She continued.

Mentally reviewing his inventory, he nodded. "Several species, actually. Dogwood, melons, petunia, sycamore..." He trailed off as her eyes turned even darker. "Yes, and begonias," he added hurriedly.

"Do you remember the begonia I had on my desk?"

"The prize-winning one?" Ray asked helpfully then cleared his throat and took a step back as both Janine and Egon glared at him. "Just trying to help," he mumbled.

"You might want to stay out of this one, Ray." Winston was beginning to grin. He could see where this was going and his hunch had been right. Egon wasn't just in hot water; he'd probably drown if someone didn't bail him out soon.

"If your fungus was upstairs and my plant was downstairs, would you like to tell me how my begonia ended up _plastered_ in mildew!" she snapped.

"Um..." Egon cleared his throat. "Did it die?"

"No, it didn't die!" She flared. Her eyes narrowed. "But that's only because I'm so good at killing the damn stuff."

"Fascinating," it slipped out before Egon could stop himself. Quickly he pushed his glasses back up his nose and tried to look casual as she turned her glare on him again.

"Here's a scientific fact for you, _Doctor Spengler,_" she said in a tone of voice that reminded Egon of a jail cell door clanging shut in the distance. Thanks to the Mayor of New York, he had more personal intimacy with that particular sound than he cared to remember. "You can fight mildew with one tablespoon of baking soda and a few drops of dish-washing liquid mixed into one gallon of water. If I see your hobby interfere with mine ever again, your lab will end up smelling like a restaurant kitchen on health inspection day!"

Scientific curiosity regarding how good at killing mildew she really was warred for a moment with guilt at having inadvertently upset her. Eventually, contrition won. "I'll... uh... remember that," he promised gravely. "I'm sorry, Janine." He watched with interest as the anger drained from her gaze to be replaced by a more familiar, and welcome, exasperated affection.

"I'll forgive you this time, Egon," she told him in a calmer tone. "But don't let it happen again."

He nodded in agreement and, although he made a careful effort to hide the extent of his relief at hearing that, he couldn't quite prevent a faint, wry smile from flitting across his lips. Although he knew his friends were well aware of the fact he wasn't indifferent to the secretary's attentions, he was fairly certain that was _all_ they knew.

"She forgives him," Peter sighed and folded his arms as if in protest at a world gone mad. "The man destroys her prize-winning begonia and she forgives him." He shook his head. "Only Egon could get away with that."


	3. Ripples in the Water

**Chapter 2: _Ripples In The Water_**

_"Like a drop in the vast ocean, each of us causes ripples as we move through our lives. The effects of whatever we do - insignificant as it may seem - spread out beyond us. We may never know what far-reaching impact even the simplest action might have on our fellow mortals. Thus, we need to be conscious, all of the time, of our place in the ocean, of our place in the world, of our place among our fellow creatures. For, if enough of us join forces, we can swell the tide of events - for good or for evil." -- Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman._

The botanical garden was already crowded when they arrived. They weren't in uniform and there technically shouldn't have been anything to distinguish them from anyone else except to avid TV fans that had seen their faces on the news. However, transporting five people had made Ecto-1 the vehicle of choice and so the arrival of that highly distinctive car aroused a great deal of attention.

As usual, Peter lapped it up and even signed the autographs of a few children that came running up to him. The others, however, sneaked off into the gardens, quickly distancing themselves from the car and, for the most part, interest waned when people realised the Ghostbusters had not arrived to bust any ghosts. It was with relief that they decided Egon had done the right thing in convincing them not to bring Slimer along after all.

"What time does the lecture start, Janine?" Ray asked as they walked around the gardens. He wasn't exactly a fan of botanical gardens but he had to admit some of the plants were impressive.

"Two." At some point during the excited scuffle in the parking lot, Janine had slipped over to Egon. Not exactly shy, she didn't crave the attention either and the public had always found the physicist to be the least approachable Ghostbuster. He was too tall, too stern, too intelligent - and too good at utilising these personality traits to ensure himself privacy.

Taking advantage of the situation, she had followed him out of the way, snaking an arm through his and found herself left alone as well. He had neither objected to nor acknowledged the gesture and waited only long enough for Ray and Winston to catch up. With Peter's cheerful "Catch ya later, guys!" ringing in their ears, the four had disappeared inside and now, half an hour later, they were enjoying the relaxing atmosphere of the gardens and Peter still hadn't rejoined them. If Ray and Winston noticed that Janine and Egon were still arm-in-arm, they were too polite to draw attention to it.

Besides, they were on Janine's side.

The engineer checked his watch. "That'll be soon then. Maybe we should find Peter?"

"Shouldn't be too hard," Winston said with a grin. "Just follow the legions of outraged women."

They shared a laugh that was cut off by a muffled exclamation from Janine. Darting away from Egon's side, she crossed the garden. For a moment, the three men thought it was an odd blotchy bush that had attracted her attention but they quickly realised it was the tall tree standing behind it that had excited her. Exchanging mystified glances, they walked over to join her.

"What is it?" Winston asked curiously. He chuckled openly as he spotted Egon surreptitiously checking for any sign of a plant label. The physicist just did not like it when he didn't have all the answers.

"A pukatea, I think," Janine was peering at the bark closely and then glanced up to study the thick, leathery leaves.

"A what?"

"It's from New Zealand," Janine sighed and stepped back. "My sister and her boyfriend went out there recently for a visit. They decided to bring me back a souvenir," she pointed to the tree. "One of these."

"That was nice of them," Ray said.

"I suppose," she said dubiously. "But do you know how _big_ they grow?" She stared at their blank faces. "118 feet," she clarified.

The three men exchanged amused looks. "That's almost as big as that geranium," Ray laughed as he tried to picture Janine fitting a 118-foot tree into her apartment. "What are you going to do with it?"

She sighed. "Take it to a plant doctor I guess. It's dying, I don't know why. I've been trying to find out but this is the first healthy tree in this country I've seen."

"Perhaps you can find someone to discuss this with when the lecture is concluded," Egon suggested to her.

She nodded in agreement and was about to respond when the speakers crackled into life, announcing the commencement of the Charles Austin Memorial Talk in fifteen minutes. Taking that as their cue, they hurried out of the garden and made their way to where the lectures would be taking place. "No sign of Peter," Winston mused thoughtfully when they arrived. "He's going to miss the show."

"Never mind. It doesn't look like his girlfriend is putting in an appearance for this one anyway," Ray chuckled, noticing the person preparing for the speech was male and not female.

"He probably bailed on us." Winston shook his head. "We'll get him back for it later."

The lecture lasted for an hour but it was one of the longest hours of Winston's life. He wasn't one of those people who could sit still for long periods of time unless it was for a reason of personal interest. As much as he loved Janine, he was beginning to regret having agreed to come. Without any scientific training, the more technical aspects of the talk were lost on him but he also didn't have any particular love of plants. He didn't mind them; he just didn't like them enough to want to listen to people chat about them. His only respite came from the realisation that Ray was as restless as he was. Unlike Winston, Ray grasped the science all too easily but just like Winston, plants couldn't hold his interest for long.

Janine, however, seemed to be having fun and both men concluded that at least was worth it: recent events had shaken them all and it had become rare to see the secretary really relax and enjoy herself. Egon also seemed completely absorbed in the talk but that wasn't particularly surprising to either of them. They did notice that every so often, Janine would lean across to Egon and whisper something. The physicist would shake his head or nod and then whisper something back. It didn't take long for them to realise that he was interpreting the lecture for her. Janine may have known more about plants than the rest of them put together but she didn't know how to speak the scientist's language. Fortunately, Egon did and seemed willing to clarify any words and phrases she didn't understand.

When the lecture concluded, Janine disappeared off to ask the speaker something while the three men spread out to search for Peter. Egon and Winston were the first to return, joining Janine outside the room with disgruntled shakes of their heads. As Janine pocketed the address she had managed to get for a plant doctor familiar with pukatea trees, Ray strolled over to them. He was grinning.

"I found him," he announced.

"Where'd he get to?" Winston asked dryly. "Or is that a dumb question?"

"Come and see." Ray chuckled and walked off.

The engineer led them to a garden where another talk was in progress. Janine almost walked into the back of Egon before realising the three men had come to an abrupt halt near the entrance. Edging around them, she quickly discovered what had distracted them. The speaker of this lecture was a tall woman with a curvaceous figure and long blonde hair.

"Wow. Peter wasn't kidding when he said she was hot!" Ray mumbled, flushing to the roots of his hair.

"You said it," Winston agreed, momentarily forgetting the reason why they had approached the garden.

Egon quickly turned his attention away from the speaker as he caught Janine watching him with an intense gaze. Unlike Peter, he had a tendency to discern between what he considered attractive and what he was actually attracted to and while this woman was undoubtedly attractive that alone wasn't enough to retain his interest. Although the difference made perfect sense to him, he suspected trying to clarify it to Janine would cause more trouble than it would solve. Instead of speaking, he flashed her an amused smile and she blushed furiously at having been caught staring. She immediately relaxed, however, which confirmed in his mind that he had taken the correct approach to resolving the matter.

"Ray, where's Peter?" he murmured pointedly.

The engineer started and cleared his throat. "Peter? Um. Right. Peter's over there," he gestured to where Peter was stood a little way from the main congregation. He actually wasn't too far from the entrance and was watching the speaker intently.

Winston was about to move forward and approach the errant Ghostbuster but something in Peter's expression stopped him. Although concentrating on the beautiful speaker, he actually seemed more interested in what she was saying than in what she looked like. Freed of the constraints of maintaining his carefully crafted image for the benefit of those who knew him best, his expression was one they very rarely got the chance to see: alert, contemplative, _thinking_.

They turned their attention to the speaker again to see what she was talking about but she was wrapping up. Egon checked his programme. "'A discussion on the long-term benefits of human-plant interactions in psychological and parapsychological research'," he quoted as the others looked at him. "Hm. Fascinating."

As if hearing Egon's voice, Peter started slightly and glanced in their direction. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, his entire demeanour changed, as if there had been two people standing in the same spot. The easy swagger and mocking gaze that seemed to define his personality were in full force by the time he reached them.

"What did I tell ya? Can I pick them or what?" he said proudly, referring to the speaker with a cocky grin.

"Interesting lecture, Doctor Venkman?" Egon asked coolly, a deceptively innocent statement designed to tell his old friend one thing - that he wasn't fooled for an instance.

The psychologist managed to look shocked. "She was _talking_? Wow, I never got passed those lips!" He nudged Ray. "So, what do ya think? Great legs or what?"

Ray coughed and blushed then threw Peter an embarrassed glare. "I think we've had Peter off the leash too long," he complained, rubbing the back of his neck ruefully.

"I'll second that." Winston grinned at Ray's discomfort. "Come on, Flyboy. Time to lock you up where you won't frighten the decent people."

Peter chuckled but obligingly led the way back out to Ecto-1. "How was your lecture?"

"Well, the speaker wasn't so easy on the eye I can tell you!" Winston laughed.

"Should have stuck with me. I told you I know how to pick them."

"Well, _I_ enjoyed it." Janine retorted. "I even got the name of a plant doctor who knows about pukatea."

"Do I even want to know?" Peter asked wryly.

"It's a species of tree native to New Zealand," Egon informed him.

"Which Egon _didn't_ know before the lecture," Winston stage whispered to Peter.

"You mean there _is_ a God?" Peter laughed.

Egon didn't respond. They glanced around, expecting to find the physicist sulking or pretending to ignore them but instead were confronted by an expression of utter consternation.

"Egon?" Janine asked cautiously.

"Ray. Unlock the car," Egon said softly, staring through the window at the interior.

"What's wrong, Homeboy?" Winston had dropped his playful demeanour and was on the alert but Egon said nothing until the car was unlocked. He quickly climbed in, picking up the P.K.E. meter that they had forced him to leave behind.

Seeing it was beeping and flashing, they all quickly piled in and closed the doors. Ray turned the engine on and twisted round. "What is it, Egon?"

"Hm." Egon absently adjusted the settings.

"We got trouble coming?" Winston asked.

"Hm," Egon responded, a little more emphatically.

"What have you got, Egon?" Peter asked impatiently. "You're killing us with the suspense here."

"Intense psychokinetic activity but it's extremely difficult to obtain a reading. I'm currently registering anything from a Class 6 to a Class 8 -- no, Class 9..." he trailed off. "It's refusing to stabilise. Hm."

"It may need fine-tuning," Ray said immediately, rummaging around in the glove compartment and pulling out a second P.K.E. meter.

"Tex, you've been hanging around Egon too long," Peter commented dryly when he saw the second meter.

Ray's eyes widened. "Wow, you're right, Egon! I've never seen readings like these. First it's off the scale, then it's on the scale. It could be have been residuals if it wasn't more powerful than almost anything we've ever seen before!"

"Why can't you get a fix on the power level?" Winston asked.

"The ambient psychokinetic energy field is in a state of extreme flux," Egon mused, still making adjustments to his meter. "We should return home and take more readings there."

"He doesn't know what's causing it," Winston told Peter and Janine.

"Egon. Doesn't this remind you of Fresnal zone experiments?" Ray was staring at his own meter.

Egon's lips pressed together in a thin line. "Yes, it does, Ray. But I need more data before I conclude that's what we're dealing with."

Ray grinned sheepishly at him then began to move the car.

"So what was all that about?" Peter asked. Egon shot him a disapproving look, so the psychologist turned to the driver. "Ray?"

Ray sighed. "Pebble in the pond, Peter. Someone's dropped a ghostly pebble into New York's ectoplasmic lake and we're picking up the ripples."

"Okay, that doesn't sound too bad..." Winston frowned, trying to decipher the expression on Egon's face.

Ray sighed and tossed his meter across to Winston. Looking down, the army veteran was startled to see the energy peaking off the chart. He glanced sharply at the engineer who nodded in agreement.

Winston swallowed. "Not too bad until I ask what kind of pebble can cause a _Class 10_ ripple, anyway," he rephrased weakly.

"That," Egon said, very softly. "is indeed the question."


	4. A World of Trouble

**Chapter 3: _A World of Trouble_**

_"Only those who get into scrapes with their eyes open can find the safe way out." -- Logan Pearsall Smith_.

"Suspension?"

"Okay."

"Shocks?"

"Okay."

"Steering box?"

"Okay."

"Transmission?"

"That's okay too."

"Brakes?"

"Working."

"Brake _pads_?"

"Ray, they're fine!"

Winston leaned out of the window and glanced down as Ray tugged himself out from underneath Ecto-1. The engineer was covered in grease and looked utterly frustrated. He stared into Winston's grinning features. "Well, honestly, Winston. _Something_ isn't right! You heard her on the way back home!"

"Hey, man, relax!" Winston climbed out of the car. "She's running fine now. It was probably just some debris or something."

"Or something," Ray muttered. He froze and his eyes widened. "Or something!" he dived inside the vehicle and returned a moment later armed with his P.K.E. meter. Winston watched in disbelief as the engineer flipped it on and began running it over the car.

"What are you doing?!" he asked incredulously.

"What if she's got a ghost inside her, Winston? You know how she sounds when Slimer's riding along. Remember what happened when she got possessed? It was a nightmare to fix the poor girl back up afterwards!"

"Ray!" Winston grabbed the shorter Ghostbuster and swung him around to face him. "Ray," he said firmly, taking the meter off him. "You're taking this way too seriously, man. She's running fine. More than fine. For a lady of her years, she's _perfect_. You know it, I know it. Let it go. Besides," he added with a twinkle in his eye as Ray opened his mouth to protest. "How would you know how hard it was to fix her up after the earth elemental possessed her? _I_ was the one who did all the work!"

Ray's shoulders slumped. Although it was officially Winston who kept the car running smoothly these days, Ecto-1 remained Ray's greatest weakness. That fateful day, years ago, when he had seen the ancient black ambulance-hearse parked dejected and forgotten, he had known with certainty that he had found the perfect car for the job. He had spotted the potential hidden underneath the dirt that caked her form - the sleek lines, the efficient design, the hint of grandeur in the tail fins that flared out from the rear wheels. It didn't matter if the transmission was broken, the suspension in tatters and wiring shot. In fact, for him, it had been part of the appeal, part of the reason it had been love at first sight.

Peter and Egon had never understood his obsession with the car, nor had he even tried to explain it to them. It wasn't that he didn't fully comprehend it himself - although that was certainly part of the reason. It was that Ecto-1 had claimed him heart, mind and soul and it was a relationship he didn't want to share with anyone.

At least until Winston had come along. Winston, the former army veteran and ex-construction worker who shared his appreciation for hard labour and his awe of all things mechanical. In Winston, he had found a kindred spirit, someone who instinctively understood how special Ecto-1 was, the only other person who had ignored her garish exterior to see the beauty that lay hidden beneath. It was because Winston had also fallen in love with Ecto-1 that Ray had trusted him enough to give her up to him when he had more urgent matters to deal with. Ecto-1 was Ray's girl and Winston's baby and as long as she had both of them to protect her, Ray was convinced she would last forever.

"You're probably right," he sighed reluctantly. He gave Ecto-1 another lingering look, not willing to give up his concerns quite yet. "Although maybe..."

"No maybe!" Winston barked in a tone that would have made a drill sergeant proud. "Ray, we've been working on her all day. We're taking a break."

Ray sighed and closed the door. "Alright, maybe you're right," he conceded at last. Ray trusted Winston's judgement when it came to Ecto-1. Winston seemed absolutely convinced there was nothing wrong with her and he knew as much about her quirks and kinks as he did. If Winston thought everything was fine, why shouldn't Ray believe him? There wasn't any reason, the engineer realised. Just possessive protectiveness that made him excessively sensitive whenever they made a major adjustment to old girl's system, as if she was being sent in for major surgery and there was a chance the operation could fail. "She _does_ seem to be running a lot better now..."

"Of course she is," Winston said with a chuckle. "She's got both of us looking out for her."

Ray brightened. "Yeah, she has at that," he patted the hood affectionately, then followed Winston across the room towards the reception area. His eyebrows knitted together at the sight that greeted him. Janine was sat at her usual place, reading a book on plants, half hidden behind a potted sapling that was looking droopy and forlorn. Peter had parked himself at one end of her desk, feet propped up on another chair playing cards with himself and the pair seemed to be talking in a very animated fashion. Slimer was floating up and down the stairs, stiff-backed and alert, looking as serious as Ray had ever seen him. His curiosity grew even stronger as their conversation came to a sudden stop. The guilty looks they shared faded into relief as they recognised Winston and Ray and both relaxed again.

"What's going on?" Winston asked, sounding as curious as Ray felt.

"And what's the Spud up to?" Ray added, glancing back at the little ghost. If he hadn't known better, he would have thought Slimer was patrolling.

Peter shot him a quirky grin. "We told him to guard the stairs in case Egon came down," he tapped his nose with a conspiratorial wink. "Janine can't think what to get him for his birthday."

"I know you've all sorted out what you're going to get him so I wanted to get him something special, something you guys might not have thought of. But nothing seems appropriate and I'm running out of time," she sighed.

The engineer felt a subtle shift in emotion at that, transferring his concern for Ecto-1's new engine to Janine's current predicament. The secretary was very particular about special occasions. She was always the driving force that ensured everyone at the firehouse enjoyed their birthdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. She had even created a special occasion for Slimer to celebrate the day he had been accepted as part of their mismatched family so he wouldn't feel left out. Usually, she was the one helping them to find the perfect present not the one needing help and Ray suddenly realised with a certain amount of guilt that they were all in danger of taking the secretary's varied social skills for granted. He had assumed Janine already had a present for Egon, it certainly hadn't occurred to him to ask and now he felt remiss. Of all of them, this was the occasion that mattered the most to her.

"Hey, we can put our heads together," Ray grabbed a seat and sat down. "I'm sure between the four of us we can come up with something."

She smiled gratefully. "Thanks, Ray."

"Okay." Winston agreeably perched himself on the opposite side of her desk to Peter. "So what're we looking at here?"

That was as far as he got. At that moment, the desk vibrated as the phone leapt into life. Janine started then grabbed it. When she spoke, her mournful tone was gone, replaced by a brisk, commanding voice that immediately let the callers know they were dealing with professionals and not the quacks so many of their clients initially feared they were.

"Ghostbusters Central!"

Ray watched the multitude of emotions that flitted across her features in interest, unable to hear what the caller was saying at the other end. The secretary frowned. "I see. What kind...?" Her expression shifted to one of rapt concentration. "Uh-huh. Everywhere or just in one spot?" She paused and her eyes widened in obvious horror. "Oh that's terrible! Yes! They'll be there at once!" She hung up and slammed her fist into the alarm to alert Egon and turned back to the other three. "That was the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. There's been some kind of fireball in one of the gardens. It might be some kind of elemental - wind or fire. Lots of people have been injured and it sounds like some are trapped - it was the police who called us."

"Man, that sounds like a world of trouble," Winston muttered.

Egon skidded to a stop next to the desk in time to hear that last comment. He was holding an active P.K.E. meter already. "The readings we detected yesterday have been growing stronger. I have been unable to find an origin for them but..."

"...but we first detected them at the botanical gardens yesterday so what's happening now could be related!" Ray finished quickly, seeing at once what Egon was thinking.

"So, what? We're definitely dealing with an elemental then?" Winston demanded.

"It could be any one of a number of entities," Egon replied grimly.

"Looks like we're going to need to pack some serious firepower on this one," Peter mused. "Right, Egon?"

"Right, Peter." Egon nodded in agreement, already moving towards Ecto-1.

Upon experiencing Ray's driving, it was sometimes impossible to believe how much Ecto-1 meant to him. Making the journey in half the time any of the others could have managed it, he screeched to an ungraceful stop in the botanical gardens' parking lot and they all climbed swiftly out of the car. As they sorted out their equipment, Peter scanned the crowd of shocked visitors, emergency vehicles and news crews for some kind of leadership. Eventually spotting it in the form of Deputy Police Chief O'Malley, he yelled out the officer's name and jogged over, followed closely by the rest of his team.

"Who called us?" Peter asked as the policemen turned in response to their approach.

Ray shifted his P.K.E. meter uneasily as a sudden silence descended over the parking lot at the sight of them. Usually when the Ghostbusters were called in, everyone in the vicinity was already expecting their arrival. Sometimes the reaction was negative, often it was positive, but it was always animated. Ray had never seen such a profound stillness and he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising in response. Apparently, even Egon felt it because his attention snapped up from his own meter to observe the surroundings.

"Interesting," the physicist mumbled then dropped his gaze back to his readings. Ray frowned in silent agreement. It was quite obviously a shock for people to see the Ghostbusters here at all. If most of the people visiting the centre had not expected them, that meant the problem either _wasn't_ supernatural or that the threat was invisible or highly localised. He didn't like either option and quickly whipped out his ecto-goggles, settling them firmly on his forehead. He had a hunch he was going to need them.

"Aye," O'Malley agreed. "I don't know if this is up your street but it sure doesn't look right to me. A few of the fellows agreed so we called you out."

Peter nodded. "Better safe than sorry," he agreed. "What have we got?"

O'Malley turned and waved. In response a tall, thin man of middling years and wearing an expensive business suit approached them. "Ghostbusters, this is the centre's director, Professor Mick Birkenall."

The engineer watched as Peter swiftly cast an eye over him before holding out his hand. Ray knew that Peter was already actively assessing their employer even before the man had spoken. How the psychologist responded initially was often an indication of how the business relationship would develop. "Doctor Venkman, sir," he said smoothly. "And these are my associates, Doctors Spengler and Stantz and Mr Zeddemore."

Ray nodded once as his name was mentioned. Peter had decided to make an academic impression on the man. That meant Peter either thought the director feared the Ghostbusters were frauds or that he was anticipating academic condescension.

"Glad to have you aboard, Doctor Venkman," the director did indeed look openly doubtful. "The problem is the Charles Austin Memorial Garden. There was an earthquake and something near the entrance caught fire. People started evacuating the centre until the power was cut. When it was restored, we got everyone else out that we could but we can't get inside the Memorial Garden to reach the people still trapped in there."

Suddenly realising the director didn't even know how to begin explaining why the Ghostbusters had been called, Ray decided to start with the basics. "Professor Birkenall, what made you decide this was a supernatural event?" Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Peter give him a quick nod of approval and he felt an answering surge of confidence. He had been right then, the director wasn't someone who had ever had reason to believe in the existence of a paranormal world until now.

The professor sighed. "That, gentlemen, you had better see for yourselves," he said. Nodding to the police, he allowed the Ghostbusters to break the police cordon and led them inside.

As they walked through the gardens, Ray found his sense of unease increasing. They looked exactly as he had seen them the day before. Although cloudy, there was no sign of bad weather approaching. A light, cool breeze ruffled his auburn hair as he walked, carrying the scents of many different plants but no hint of smoke. Nowhere could he see any damage, either from an explosion or from fire.

"Hm," Egon said softly. He hadn't looked up once since entering the gardens, concentrating completely on his meter but Ray understood the sentiment. Lowering his ecto-goggles, he began scanning the area. A moment later, he lifted them again. Seeing the inquisitive looks on both Peter and Winston's faces, he gave them a baffled shrug. His goggles had detected nothing supernatural, aside from the ambient psychokinetic flux that the meters were reporting.

Their guide, however, had not stopped here and continued through, leading them to the Memorial Garden. Only when his destination came into view did he stop and the Ghostbusters could see what had made him pause.

There was no sign of fire that any of them could detect but what was visible was a swirling gale-force wind that seemed to form a barrier between them and the garden beyond. Caught up in the storm's wrath were plants, furniture, bags, pots and a myriad other items.

It was only with difficulty that they could see into the garden beyond. There was no sign that the plants were in any way being damaged by the storm raging about them but there were definitely people in there. People lying on the ground, unmoving as if asleep, unconscious... or dead.

"We've seen no sign of the fire that was reported but if you manage to get closer, you'll see those..." the director swallowed thickly. "People... have terrible burns."

The Ghostbusters exchanged uneasy looks. "This is the only place there's a storm?" Ray asked.

The director nodded. "No-one can get into the garden to check whether those people are alive or dead. The wind could be a solid wall for all our ability to penetrate it. Where's it coming from?" He gestured to the sky above him. "There's no weather front above us. It's like nothing on this Earth."

"Which is why you called us." Winston finished.

"Yes, exactly."

"Hm." Egon pointed his meter at the garden and began to walk forwards. Ray winced. Although he was often accused of being impulsive and lacking in respect for potential risk, Ray had never considered himself to be anywhere near as bad as Egon, who had a tendency to conclude risk based on probability. Sometimes, the physicist didn't even seem to bother with that much if he thought the chance for scientific research outweighed the value of his own life - which seemed to be distressingly often. It wasn't that Ray was unable to understand the value of scientific research, it was that he was more willing to accept the value of human life than Egon was. Not that he felt Egon was cold and indifferent to human emotion but he did suspect that Egon sometimes _wished_ he was.

The engineer would have been very surprised to discover that the others felt exactly the same way about him that he felt about Egon. He would have been further astonished to realise that Peter and Winston commonly laid wagers as to which of the pair they would next be hauling out of harm's way thanks to some interesting unknown anomaly that just had to be investigated.

Apparently, this time it was Egon's turn to play mad scientist and Ray could hear Peter's loud sigh.

"Uh... Egon..." the psychologist protested mildly. "We don't know..."

The strangled gasp from Egon and a sharp crackle that sounded suspiciously like something electrical short-circuiting was enough to start them all moving. The physicist stumbled backwards, clutching his arm, his P.K.E. meter clattering groundwards to lie in a charred, smoking heap.

"Egon? You alright, man?" It was Winston who reached the injured man's side first.

"Psychokinetic energy too strong. Overloaded the meter," Egon muttered between clenched teeth, his eyes blurring with tears of pain as Peter carefully turned over his hand to reveal the electrical burns now adorning the long, thin fingers.

Heeding the lesson Egon had learned the hard way, Ray decided to try a slightly different approach. They needed to confirm the meter had not been malfunctioning and he thought he knew a way to do that without hurting anyone else. Carefully adjusting the settings of his own meter, he laid it on the floor. A moment later, it too shorted out in a small but spectacular explosion.

"It's supernatural alright," the engineer confirmed. "And it's so powerful our equipment isn't calibrated to cope with it."

"You said that no-one could get into the garden." Winston commented to the director. "Did anyone get hurt trying?"

The professor's response was a shake of the head. "No, not that I'm aware of."

Winston nodded. Squaring his shoulders and cradling his thrower, he stepped forward.

"Winston, I don't think..." Peter began but it was too late. Winston reached the winds and his determined stride seemed to waver, slowing. He gritted his teeth and bore down, fighting the tornado for every footstep he managed to take. Then, suddenly, the winds seemed to shift. With a yell of surprise, he was lifted bodily off his feet and flung backwards, landing almost at his colleagues' feet.

"Winston, are you hurt?" Ray demanded, reaching down to help him up.

His response was a grunt of disgust. "I'm fine but that's the mother of all hurricanes!"

"It's a manifestation," Egon corrected wearily, fighting to regain control over his protesting nerve endings. He continued to cradle his injured arm as he contemplated the sight before him. "Whatever supernatural entity resides within, it clearly has control over the elements. Mr. Birkenall," he turned around. "Is this the only place any supernatural activity has been documented?"

The director nodded. "Whatever it is, it only seems interested in that garden."

"Hm. At the seminar yesterday, the speaker stated the garden was bequeathed to the centre in Doctor Charles Austin's will. Has there been any kind of supernatural activity associated with the botanical gardens prior to this memorial?"

"None that I know but maybe you could find something we've never heard of?"

Egon nodded. "It's possible. How about Doctor Austin's estate?"

The director looked startled. "I have no idea. I wasn't directly involved in the affairs at Doctor Austin's premises. You would need to talk to Doctor Newman about that. He was the botanist in charge of creating the Memorial Garden."

Listening to this in silence, Ray frowned and nodded at Egon in agreement. They definitely needed more background information. Seeing the look that passed between the pair, the director stepped forward a pace. "We can do that now, if you like," he offered.

"Are there any helicopters around here?" Winston asked suddenly.

"Thinking of a change in career?" Peter asked dryly.

"No. Peter, maybe we can get a better view of what's happening from above? Maybe we can even land if we come in by air. There's reporters and police around here, right? Someone should have a helicopter we can borrow for a bit to run a flyby."

"Actually, that's a good idea," Ray said enthusiastically. "I'm sure I saw a news crew in one when we entered. We need to know if this wind barrier is around the whole of the garden and a helicopter would be the fastest way of finding out."

Peter nodded and then gave Egon a speculative stare. "How bad is that hand?" he asked bluntly.

Egon looked down at his injured hand then straightened defiantly. "I do not require treatment," he replied immediately. "We should interview the scientists while we are still here."

The psychologist gazed at him for several moments as if unsure whether to believe him but the physicist's stare remained firm and unwavering. Eventually, he nodded reluctantly. "Okay. Ray, Winston, go and track down a helicopter and see if you can get into the garden that way. I'll go with Egon to meet Doctor Newman," he looked at them expectantly. All three Ghostbusters nodded in agreement, so he returned his gaze to the director. "Lay on, MacDuff," was all he said.


	5. Shadows of the Wood

**Chapter 4: _Shadows of the Wood_**

_"When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?" - Seneca._

Peter and Egon found themselves taken to a small conference room where there were already several people engaged in a heated debate about the problem at the newest garden. Although a few people glanced their way, the noise level barely abated, forcing the professor to raise his voice in order to be heard.

"If we could have quiet for a moment, ladies and gentlemen!" Although the room subsided, Peter had the distinct impression it was more as an excuse to back out of endless arguments and circular logic without losing face than out of any real interest in seeing what the director had to say.

"Alec, Tim." Birkenall waved them over. "I'd like you to meet two of the Ghostbusters, Doctors Venkman and Spengler."

Peter watched two men detach themselves from the table and approach them. The one who had reacted first was an average-sized fellow with a rangy stride and intelligent, determined eyes. Peter bit back a grin at the expression he was so used to seeing on the face of another scientist he could have mentioned. The other man was slightly shorter, with long, ragged hair and watery blue eyes. Dressed casually in sloppy, comfortable clothing, he looked as though he had never left his student days behind him and his expression was more curious than wary.

"Doctors of what?" the taller one asked bluntly, staring boldly at the Ghostbusters.

"Psychology," Peter looked him over with more than a hint of mischief in his gaze. "You seem to be a dedicated scientist, Mr... I'll assume you're Doctor Newman. Right? Good." He didn't pause as he saw his challenger start to nod and answer and he could see the slightly startled expression appear in the man's eyes as he continued. "Well, Doctor Newman, we're here to ask for your expertise in resolving this matter. Since you are familiar with the history of the Charles Austin Memorial Garden, you're our logical starting point."

Alec studied him suspiciously. "Psychologist, huh?" He paused, obviously thinking over what Peter had just said, then smiled dryly. "You're _good_," he added sourly and his tone indicated he knew exactly what Peter had just done to him. "Okay, I'll bite. How do Ghostbusters, logic and superstition go together?"

Peter winced. "Ouch, you said the s-word," he muttered as he watched Egon indignantly straighten up to his full height. "Down, big guy," he patted his friend's shoulder with a sly smile. "Doctor Newman, I'd like to introduce you to Doctor Spengler. If you can find a doctorate he _doesn't_ have, I'll be amazed and considering you seem to share his distaste for all things superstitious I have the feeling you two will get on like a house on fire."

His grin grew wider at the identical expressions of irritation the two men threw him. "See?" He winked at the second man and watched as the expression of barely concealed amusement changed to surprise at having been caught. Then the man shrugged and grinned openly.

"Doctor Tim Richardson but call me Tim. Everyone else does," he offered Peter his hand and the psychologist shook it.

"In the seminar you gave yesterday, you indicated that Doctor Austin had habituated the plants to the American climate from the more variable Levantine climates. I was therefore given to understand nothing in the Memorial Garden is actually new. Was my assumption correct?" Egon asked, coming to the point with his usual blunt approach.

Alec looked startled for a moment. "You were at that talk?"

Egon nodded. "Botany is the hobby of one of our employees," was his only comment and he raised his eyebrows expectantly.

"Uh... right." The botanist pulled himself back on track with a visible mental effort. "And the answer is yes. We weren't able to accommodate most of his collection but we did transfer a sizeable portion of it. It was his wish to have his garden recreated as closely as possible so our influence on it has been minimal."

"Hm," Egon said in response. "Has Doctor Austin's estate been documented as having any similar events occur there?"

Alec blinked. "Nothing I've ever heard of. But I wouldn't know."

Peter glanced at Egon. "You think they could have inherited a little hitch-hiker along with the plants?" he asked him.

"It's possible," Egon's answer was non-committal.

"Hey, if anything weird was going to hitch-hike, it would have to be on the _Cedrus_," Tim said thoughtfully.

"Don't be ridiculous, Tim." Alec said shortly as the Ghostbusters attention suddenly centred directly on the dendrologist.

"The _Cedrus_?" Egon asked at once.

Tim shrugged. "Yeah. There were these two young _Cedrus_ we took with the last load. Spookiest things I've ever encountered and I've had a lot of trees pass through my neck of the woods - no pun intended but these two were... different."

"Different?"

"Tim." Alec said warningly.

Tim shot Alec a withering look. "Who cares if the feeling wasn't logical, Alec?" he demanded. "I _definitely_ felt something around those trees. And I know you did as well. You didn't want to go back into that house any more than I did."

Alec sighed impatiently and turned to the two Ghostbusters. "It was late, we were tired and Mr. Jabbaar had regaled us with one too many haunted forest tales. Our imaginations were running away with us," he glared at Tim. "That's _all_ it was."

"Okay, time out," Peter interrupted. "How about we take this from the top? What's a _Cedrus_, who's Mr. Jabbaar and what haunted forest tales?"

"_Cedrus _is a genus within the Cupressaceae," Tim jumped in immediately. "You've heard of the white cedar and red cedar?" He waited for the pair to nod and continued. "Well, they aren't cedars, they're just misnamed junipers. True cedars are confined to the genus _Cedrus_ and there's only four species, most very rare and none native to the US. The two trees we inherited from Doctor Austin were originally brought over from the Levant three years ago and are _Cedrus libani_, the Cedar of Lebanon. We're lucky to have them - the species is becoming quite rare," he glanced at Alec.

Alec looked wry. "You'll have to excuse Tim. Trees are his life, he never shuts up about them."

"Reminds me of a physicist I know," Peter threw Egon a teasing look and was rewarded with a scowl.

A small, genuine smile flitted briefly over Alec's features at the interaction between the two Ghostbusters before he wrest control of his emotions and picked up the story. "Doctor Austin had an old gardener called Nasim Jabbaar. Completely obsessed with plants, trees in particular. He's not a trained botanist but our dendrologists have found his knowledge useful over the years."

"He's not American by birth but has been with Doctor Austin for several years," Tim explained. "I don't know anyone alive who knows Austin's estate better. He..." he looked briefly uneasy. "He told us we had to keep the _Cedrus_ in Levantine soil to avoid bad luck. The locals where the trees came from said they were haunted and Nasim kept importing Levantine soil to ward off a curse."

Egon and Peter glanced at each other. "Let me guess," Peter sighed. "You changed the soil recently?"

"Yes. Levantine soil wasn't necessary for the trees to survive in," Alec said defensively. "It was only a superstition."

"What do you say, Egon. Think we found our culprit?" Peter turned to his friend and was surprised to see the uncertain look on Egon's face.

"We already know that plants can be possessed," Egon mused. "The geranium that tried to take over Brooklyn is evidence enough..."

"That story was true?" Tim interrupted incredulously.

"Yeah," Peter said. "For the sake of New York City, we had to ban Egon from ever giving a woman flowers again." He grinned at the baffled expressions on the two botanists' faces and particularly at the affronted one on Egon's.

"If you are asking me whether or not a pot of soil can prevent a possession or control one that has already occurred, then I would need to research that more comprehensively," Egon finished tersely, choosing to ignore the psychologist.

Peter tapped his walkie-talkie. "Hey, Ray, you there?"

"_Peter? Anything wrong?_" Ray's voice sounded slightly strained and distant.

"You ever heard of a tree possession that could be controlled by using special soil?"

"Soil native to the tree's origin," Tim corrected, his eyes afire with curiosity as he leaned forward to listen. Peter eyed the dendrologist for a moment then decided for the sake of his sanity to do everything in his power to prevent Tim and Ray ever coming together in the same room.

"You hear that, Ray?"

"_Soil native to the tree's origin. Yeah, got it, Peter._" The walkie-talkie lapsed into silence.

"Uh... Tex? You there?"

"_Sorry, Peter. I'll need to hit the books to be sure but soil by itself won't do the job. It would need to be part of a binding ritual or a gift from the conjurer to attempt to control the spirit. Why? Peter, are we dealing with a possessed tree?_"

"Sounds like it, Ray."

"_Doesn't make sense. Why would a possessed tree use fire? Is Egon there?_"

"Yes, Ray," Egon lifted his off-hand to manipulate his walkie-talkie. Peter frowned at that and made a mental note to address Egon and his injury as soon as possible.

"_Hey, Egon. What tree are we talking about here?_"

"_Cedrus libani_. The Cedar of Lebanon."

"_The Cedar of Lebanon?_" Winston's voice cut in. "_Are you sure?_"

Startled, Egon and Peter exchanged a glance. "Is that significant, Winston?" Egon asked quickly.

_"You never read the Bible, Homeboy?_" Winston responded dryly. "_It's the tree of Kings. Solomon's Temple was built out of it, it's how he showed off his wealth. According to him, it was the greatest of trees._"

Tim nodded. "Your friend is right. The Cedar of Lebanon can be considered a holy tree. Ironically, that's one of the reasons it's become so rare."

Ray's voice came through again. "_Alright. There _is _something familiar about this. I'll need to check it out when we get back home. Egon, can you get a sample of the soil the tree was in?_"

Egon turned to look at the botanists.

"You'd need to talk to Nasim," Tim said. "We don't have any."

"We'll try," Peter said. "How's the helicopter coming?"

"_We're going to be here a while,_" Winston replied. "_If you need to go anywhere, you can come back and pick us up later._"

"Alright, looks like we'll be taking Ecto-1 for a spin. We'll catch you later."

"_Peter?_"

"Yes Ray?"

"_Egon's driving._"

Peter blinked once. "What?"

"_He's the only one of us who hasn't crashed Ecto, Peter. Let him drive._"

"Ray," Peter said firmly. "Bye." He turned off the walkie-talkie and rolled his eyes. "Only Ray," he sighed and glared as he spotted the twinkle in Egon's eyes.

In the end, Ray didn't get his way. Grumbling something about the only reason Egon hadn't crashed the car yet was because he was usually too busy playing with P.K.E. meters to drive as frequently as the other three did, Peter planted himself firmly in the driving seat. Spotting the rebellious look within Egon's eyes, he deliberately glanced in the direction of Egon's damaged hand. The physicist hadn't raised the subject of the destroyed meters since the accident had occurred but he hadn't used the hand again either. Given the speed at which his defiance subsided over who was driving, Peter was convinced that Egon was hiding the pain he was in.

When they arrived, the little gardener was easily found, sitting on the porch of the cottage he had been allowed to maintain after his employer's death, smoking an old-fashioned pipe. The smoke curled around his form, dancing like a playful ghost in the light breeze and his dark eyes were fixed on them as they approached, shining brightly in the dim light.

"Mr. Jabbaar?" Peter asked cautiously.

"I am."

"I'm..."

"Yes. I watch the news. How can I help you boys?" the old voice was thin and reedy, almost like an oboe and both of them could see the huge irritation that was consuming him.

"We are investigating an anomalous manifestation of psychokinetic energy in the Charles Austin Memorial Garden," Egon said calmly. "Doctors Newman and Richardson suggested we speak with you."

"I heard about the excitement on the news. The scientists did not listen to me. They will reap the consequences of their lack of wisdom."

Both Ghostbusters stared at him. "And what exactly _are_ the consequences?" Peter asked warily.

Nasim sighed. "These two trees are the legacy of their ancient father who once stood above all others of his kind. Now, only they remain, the ancient father long gone from this earth. But the people who live there still remember and pass the stories on to their children. The ancient father protected the forest and when he died, the forest died with him. But in his dying he spoke a terrible curse and now all that wrong the forest suffer his fate. Without this last link to their home, these children have been exiled and their father rises in anger at the treatment they have received."

"Do you know how to make the... er... ancient father sleep again?" Peter asked

Nasim gave him a thin smile. "That is easy. Take him home."

"Home? To the Levant?"

Nasim nodded seriously. "That is the story."

"Are you from the Levant, Mr. Jabbaar?" Egon asked curiously.

"My family has made its home there for many generations," Nasim replied.

"Which is how you know this story?"

Nasim nodded. "I believe most people that attribute their bad luck to the trees do so to avoid assigning blame to where it should correctly be," his eyes turned distant as if he was watching something happening very far away. "All things are connected. One does not need to see the roots to know without them the tree will die."

"Did this... ancient father cause any trouble for Austin?" Peter asked.

"At first," Nasim admitted. "The men who brought the trees back here all died within weeks of the cedars arriving. One died of tetanus, another broke his spine in a fall from a ladder, another jumped off a bridge and drowned... then I brought the Lebanese soil to see if that would help. It did" he sighed. "The trees have caused no trouble until now"

"In all the stories of your people, did any involve a storm manifestation protecting the trees?" Egon asked.

Nasim considered that with a thoughtful frown on his face. As last he shrugged. "The stories have never been specific about the ways bad luck occurred. Only that it happened and that people died."

Peter sighed. "Is there anything else you can think of that could help us?"

The old gardener shook his head silently.

"Do you have any Levantine soil?" Egon added.

Nasim studied Egon curiously for a few moments. "Why?" he asked suspiciously.

"I would like to conduct an analysis to determine if there are exogenic elements within the sample that could account for the dormancy of the trees paranormal activities."

Nasim stared at him for a moment then glanced at Peter. "Does he always talk like that?" he asked dryly.

"Sometimes I think he starts the day by having a bet with the universe to see how many long words he can fit into one sentence before bedtime," Peter responded morosely.

Egon raised one long finger and pushed his glasses back up his nose with a single, emphatic gesture designed to express his annoyance with Peter's comment. Nasim smiled suddenly. "Wait here," he walked into his cottage, leaving the two Ghostbusters standing outside on the porch. A few minutes later he returned with a sealed container. "The soil your pleonastic associate desires." He handed it to Peter with a strange little twinkle in his eyes as he observed Egon's reaction to his vocabulary. "Perhaps you should carry it for your injured friend?"

The psychologist took it with both hands, surprised by how heavy it felt and surprised also by how perceptive the old man was and returned it to the car. Egon followed a few minutes later and climbed back into the passenger seat. "Firehouse or Brooklyn?" he asked.

"Neither," the psychologist smiled grimly. "Now we go to the hospital."


	6. Legacy of Cedar Mountain

**Chapter 5: _Legacy of Cedar Mountain_**

_"The heavens roared and the earth rumbled; then it became deathly still, and darkness loomed. A bolt of lightning cracked and a fire broke out, and where it kept thickening, there rained death. Then the white-hot name dimmed, and the fire went out, and everything that had been falling around turned to ash." -- Gilgamesh's third dream, 'The Epic of Gilgamesh.'_

"...By the time we managed to get our hands on a helicopter, we were losing the light," Winston sighed wearily. "And when we did get up there, there wasn't anything strange that we could see. Not even strong wind." He paused and a grim expression settled across his features. "Except for the six dead bodies, of course."

"They're definitely dead?" Janine asked in a subdued tone as she set a tray of coffee on the table in front of the three Ghostbusters. Picking up one mug, she sank down on the sofa next to Egon but her attention was on Winston.

"Oh yeah," the Ghostbusters' resident mechanic winced painfully at the memory. "They were laid out near the cedar trees alright and..." he hesitated and gave Peter a sharp look. He had already spoken to the psychologist about what they had seen, worried about how Ray was handling it. The weirdness of fighting spooks on a daily basis was completely different to coming face to face with death and the sight in the garden had been extremely unpleasant. Although Winston had experience at coping with such scenes, it had been a long time ago and dredged up memories he wasn't keen to dwell on. Peter had agreed to keep his eye on Ray and admitted he would be watching Winston closely as well. Winston hadn't expected anything different.

Now, understanding Winston's dilemma, Peter didn't actually react to it. Winston hadn't given the full detail to Peter either and the psychologist didn't want to influence how Winston approached the subject. Psychologist or not, Peter had no more personal experience with this kind of thing than the rest of the his colleagues and was therefore prepared to trust Winston's instincts on this subject.

With a sigh, the ex-soldier shrugged. "Well, they were definitely burned. I... I think they'll have trouble identifying some of them," he gave his audience a significant stare and Janine paled immediately. Egon didn't react noticeably but Peter shifted uncomfortably and nodded quickly for Winston to continue. "They had also been stabbed, I think. The wounds were hard to see but there was so much blood..."

"Were there any weapons that could have caused the wounds?" Peter asked grimly.

Winston shook his head. "Not that I could see but I don't think we're going to find any. They were... twisted." He swallowed. "Like they had been... hanged on a washing line. There was blood on the trees, on their branches..." he gave Janine a sharp look. Able to stare down showers of frogs, face ghosts, demons and transdimensional dangers, it was clear the secretary had found the line she couldn't cross. She was looking pale enough for him to fear she might faint. "Janine, are you alright?" he asked, the concern in his voice making both of his male colleagues turn to look at her.

She nodded vaguely in response, her eyes glazed. Egon abruptly leaned across and carefully prised the coffee out of her hands before her suddenly nerveless fingers could spill the hot liquid.

"I think we get the point, Winston." Egon's tone was irritated as he wrapped an arm around the secretary. She was trembling slightly but her face was composed into an iron mask, an expression that only succeeded in making her ashen features look haunted.

He swallowed. "Yeah. Sorry Janine, I wasn't trying to upset you."

"It's okay, Winston," she replied weakly, gratefully curling up against the physicist. The fact that it was Egon offering her a refuge wasn't important to her right now. What she wanted was something warm, reassuring and alive that she could use as a physical barrier against the pictures her imagination was creating, something any of the men in the room would have willingly given her had they been sat on the couch instead of Egon. "I can cope with blood but..."

"Yeah," Winston agreed tersely. She didn't need to explain. He had _seen_ the bodies after all. He forced himself to focus on the task at hand. "Anyway, like I said, everything looked normal - even the cedar trees. I tried to get another P.K.E. reading with my meter but we turned it off when it started smoking." He put the meter in question on the table but for once Egon didn't move to pick it up. With Janine currently curled up against him, it was his injured hand that was the only one free. Unfortunately, his injured hand was also his dominant hand, which meant his ability to write, work on the equipment or conduct experiments in the near future was impaired far more than he was willing to tolerate.

As if not trusting the physicist's ability to avoid playing with idle P.K.E. meters, Peter leaned forward and quickly picked it up, looking at the readings that Winston had succeeded in saving.

"We managed to get as low as a hundred feet before the pilot was forced to abort," Winston continued. "The winds picked up suddenly at around that height, although you really can't see them until you hit them. It looks like the whole garden is surrounded by this wind barrier but it just doesn't seem to be doing anything except preventing us from getting inside. Ray and I tried to use our proton packs on the barrier but there was no noticeable effect. There's also no noticeable source for the barrier. If it's the cedar trees, you can't tell just by looking. Ray looked with his ecto-goggles and said the cedar trees do show up but they're hard to read because the psychokinetic force of the wind shield interferes with the readings."

"Hm." Egon mused.

"Speaking of Tex..." Peter stretched and looked around. "Has he actually found anything yet or should we go rescue him from the library?"

Because Peter and Egon had been at the hospital longer than either had planned to be, Ray and Winston had been forced to accept a lift from Professor Birkenall in order to get home. Janine had stayed behind after-hours as well so she could find out how badly Egon had been hurt. It had passed 7pm when Ecto-1 had finally pulled up in the garage and its two tired, hungry occupants had tumbled out. In that time, Ray had locked himself up in the library, reading everything he could lay his hands on about haunted forests, interrupted only once when Winston had come to fill him in on what Nasim had told Peter and Egon. Winston had spent the time cleaning the equipment and ensuring it was in peak condition, setting aside anything that was defective or functioning below par to sort out later. His gut - backed up by the sight of those six dead people - told him this was going to be a rough job and he wanted to make sure their equipment didn't fail them when they needed it most.

"He was still reading the last time I checked," Janine sighed, running a hand through her hair which was beginning to look a little tousled.

"I'll go find him," Winston rose but stopped as Ray walked into the room. The occultist had the bleary-eyed appearance of a man who had spent too long straining his eyes in poor lighting conditions. He stifled a yawn as he collapsed in a seat and grabbed one of the mugs of coffee Janine had provided.

"How's the hand?" he asked Egon, spotting the dressing.

"Sensitive." Egon replied shortly, clearly not wanting to discuss it.

Ray's eyes narrowed. "Janine, you look terrible."

"Winston told us about the..." she said slowly.

"Oh!" Ray's face paled noticeably. He swallowed. "Yeah. Are you going to be okay?"

She smiled wanly. "Are _you_ going to be okay, Ray?"

The engineer nodded, perhaps a little too quickly. "Fine." His eyes shied away from the penetrating stare Peter suddenly shot him then snapped back to glare at his friend. Peter grinned shamelessly at him, wresting a tiny, rueful smile from Ray.

"Did you find anything?" Egon asked, smoothly moving the subject away from his injury or the fate of the six people in the garden.

A more genuine smile flitted across his face this time. "Oh yeah!" he confirmed. "I found plenty thanks to the information Mr. Jabbaar gave us." He leaned forward and put his mug down, expression becoming more serious. "Guys, this is big. After hearing what he said about where the trees came from, I limited my search to haunted forests of that region. I didn't find much, until I stopped looking for ghosts and started looking for demons and gods..."

"...Oh great. That's just great..." Winston muttered.

"Yeah." Ray agreed. "Anyway, that's when I found out that in Babylonian times, the Forest of Cedars was the home of the ancient gods. Their king was Enlil, the Lord of Winds, and he created the Lord of Cedars to protect their home from humans. I'm not entirely sure if he's a _demi_-god or a _demon_-god, but what is known is that he's a fire-breathing giant with poisonous breath. He had the teeth of a dragon or lion, was covered in horny scales, had a snake's head for a tail and the feet and claws of a vulture..."

"So, the kind you don't want to take to parties then?" Peter asked blandly.

"His name was Humbaba or Hawawa and, basically, he ruled the Forest of Cedars until two humans who were blessed by another god killed him and cut down all the trees in the forest. One of the humans, Enkidu, had known Humbaba and betrayed him. When Humbaba submitted and offered to make a deal to allow humans to cut down the cedars without incurring his wrath, Enkidu told his allies to not believe Humbaba and kill him. For this betrayal, Enkidu died a painful and slow death and, for the destruction of the forests, humanity was cursed by the gods. Since then, the land has become haunted and, as the trees have been cut down, the land has become barren and dry. Scientists say the land is suffering because the ecological role of trees in soil health and fertility has been destroyed but the locals whisper of demons and ghosts bound to continue the curse called down upon mankind for walking into the home of the gods and destroying its guardian."

"Great. So how does this tie in to our cedars?" Winston asked.

"Oh, that's the best bit!" Ray told him. "The greatest of the trees stood as the entrance to the Forest of Cedars and when Humbaba was cast down, the remains of this tree became the focus for the curse. I think all trees descended from this one have carried the curse. As long as the tree was treated well, the curse wouldn't be activated but any kind of upheaval or abuse and the curse would awaken and unleash the ancient god that's bound to it. The cedar trees must be part of the legacy of this tree. When they were uprooted from their homeland three years ago, the curse must have been activated, awakening the god. But by putting them into native soil, Mr. Jabbaar must have been able to fool the entity into believing it was home... somehow," he frowned slightly, as if a little confused by something. "Now the botanists have repotted the trees, the demon isn't fooled anymore and is waking up to enact his vengeance against humanity for cutting down his forest."

"Didn't those two botanists say the cedar is very rare?" Peter asked Egon.

"Yes," the physicist confirmed. Like Ray, he was frowning as if turning over a puzzle in his mind.

"That's gonna be one mad demon when he wakes up then." Winston sighed.

Ray was nodding. "Basically, what we're dealing with is a very ancient and very powerful god of the forest. And he's waking up in the middle of a _city_."

Peter buried his head his hands. "Ray, tell me there's a way to defeat this guy?"

Before Ray could answer, Egon cocked an eyebrow at him. "Ray, you said this god is a fire-breathing giant?"

"He sure is. Pretty mean-tempered one too."

"Then we can assume that is how the people in the garden died. The essence of Humbaba lies within the two cedar trees and can probably manipulate fire." He glanced downwards as he felt Janine flinch against him but she didn't say anything.

"Sounds reasonable." Ray agreed. "What's the problem, Egon?"

The physicist shifted slightly. "How can he make the wind barrier? Western traditions have been inherited from ancient Sumerian and Babylonian philosophy - Air and Fire oppose each other. How could he command both?"

Ray paused, mouth hanging open slightly as he thought about it. "Well, he was created and empowered by Enlil, the Lord of Winds, to protect the cedar forest and he's obviously been changed by the curse. Wind is his gift, fire his natural power."

Winston was frowning. "So what you're saying is that we can't stop the wind barrier without taking on the demon in the trees? But we can't reach the trees without busting the barrier?"

"Well, under normal circumstances, our particle throwers don't pack enough power to take on something this powerful but if we readjust our frequencies and set the streams to full power, all four concentrated at the same spot _should_ work. Right, Egon?" He looked hopefully at the physicist.

"It's an ordinary psychokinetic manifestation of extraordinarily concentrated strength," Egon was still looking distracted. "Our equipment is designed to confront this type of energy but not at this level of power."

"Right, so we soup up the packs and kick ass then!" Peter was suddenly looking much happier. "How long will it take to fix them up?"

"Not long at all, Peter," Ray said, some of his old enthusiasm finally creeping back into his demeanour. "Just a few modifications. Egon, Winston and I could all have them done in no time at all."

"There is one problem," Egon mused thoughtfully.

"I knew it," Winston sighed to Peter.

Peter scowled. "Yeah, I know the problem. Egon's not going to be playing mad scientist until that hand heals."

Egon shot Peter an irritated glare. "The problem, _Peter_, is that we have to do this as soon as possible. If we allow him to awaken, his power will be beyond anything we are capable of dealing with. If Ray is right about his motivation then, if he does wake up, he will not be satisfied with simply destroying New York. He will go wherever civilisation takes him."

"You mean our packs, which may or may not have the power to destroy this wind barrier, let alone the tree god, are the only things standing between us and Armageddon?" Winston asked.

"Yes."

Winston shook his head. "No pressure," he sighed and slumped.


	7. House of Dust

**Chapter 6: _House of Dust_**

_"The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labour." -- Albut Camus._

Silence hung over the botanical gardens like a death shroud. Tugging the collar of her uniform, Janine shivered and tried to ignore the feeling of doom that was sinking slowly into her muscles. It wasn't easy. She had never seen the gardens so deserted during business hours. The five people standing outside the Charles Austin Memorial Garden were the only living beings in the entire complex and not a single individual was smiling. Even Peter was looking more subdued than usual as he studied the wind shield with an uncertain gaze.

She backed away silently until she was certain she wasn't in the direct view of the Ghostbusters. She had argued strenuously to be included on this mission. Confronted by the magnitude of this threat, they had been reluctant to involve her at all but, precisely because of the strength of the demon, they had been left with no choice. They needed four throwers - _at least_ four throwers.

Egon had made a valiant and defiant effort to shoulder his proton pack to prevent her from being included on this bust but all he had succeeded in doing was revealing that the burn treatment he had received had not been limited to his hand but had encompassed his entire lower arm. As angry as they had ever seen him, Peter had immediately confiscated his equipment, raging about the physicist's stubborn pride. As much as they needed four throwers, Egon was currently a liability they couldn't afford. Out of options, the physicist had grudgingly conceded defeat and the Ghostbusters had reluctantly allowed Janine to replace him. Egon was now relegated to controlling their attack through judicious monitoring of the P.K.E. meters.

She stared through the gauzy air at the garden beyond. Vaguely, she could see the bodies adorning the grass, although she couldn't make out the detail; a small mercy she was grateful for. Winston had said nothing more about what he had seen and Ray had avoided the subject completely but neither of them had slept well and Ray, in particular, looked hollow-cheeked and dark-eyed as the Ghostbusters moved along the perimeter of the manifestation, trying to find its weakest spot.

Their search was hampered by the distance they had to place between themselves and the barrier to ensure their meters would survive the ordeal. Thus far, there had been some smoking and strained beeping but no accidents, so for the moment, she was free to think about the insanity of the situation she had become involved in. Oddly enough, it was Slimer she found herself dwelling on. They had forced him to remain at the firehouse, something that had upset him greatly. Usually when Janine suited up it was because the Ghostbusters were in trouble and that often meant that she'd take Slimer with her for moral support. She found herself missing the little green ghost now. Being in uniform without him made her feel strangely naked.

Biting back a sigh, she turned as the four Ghostbusters walked over to her. "We've found it," Ray said wearily. "We better get started."

Egon nodded in agreement and looked at Peter. "Ray and I have redistributed the dispersal stream to produce a highly focused particle beam. By concentrating all four throwers on the same location, you should be able to bisect the barrier."

"He means we've turned the throwers into ectoplasmic lasers to make it easier to cut through the shield," Ray explained quickly.

"Whatever," Peter said impatiently. "The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get paid." He pulled free his thrower. "Just tell me where to hit."

Ray nodded and led them to the weakest section of the barrier. Janine took a deep breath and pulled free her thrower suddenly feeling sick as he spoke. "Ready? Aim!" Four throwers buzzed into life, pointing at the hurricane wall ahead of them. "Fire!" Ray yelled and his thrower bucked as it activated.

Janine had never helped out on a bust when the protonic energy had been this highly charged - the recoil almost knocked her backwards as she activated the thrower and fought desperately for control. As quickly as she could, she directed it to target the same spot as the three more experienced Ghostbusters. Although they weren't standing close, she could feel the heat emanating from the throwers in waves and felt her skin begin to sweat in response. The winds seemed to howl above the scream of the proton packs and she blinked back the dust that was stinging her eyes.

"It's not working!" Winston yelled above the noise.

"Increase the frequency by 50," Egon's commanding voice somehow carried more efficiently than if he had shouted. Without switching their throwers off, the four quickly obeyed and Janine felt her shoulder wrench as she struggled to hold the bucking weapon steady with one hand while readjusting it with the other. The heat streaming off the weapon increased, drying out the air in front of her and singe the back of her throat. She could feel her lungs gasping for air and tears were beginning to blind her eyes.

"Is it working now?" Peter demanded, his voice hoarse from similar effort.

"Yes," Egon replied calmly. "Move forward. Slowly."

Trusting the physicist, Peter stepped forward, holding his thrower steady and walked towards the wind barrier, allowing the particle stream to carve a path through the air before him. As he reached the perimeter of the psychokinetic shield, he could feel the pressure on his thrower building as if something was fighting him. "Egon..." he began nervously.

"Peter! Get back!" Egon barked.

The psychologist didn't need to be told twice. When the physicist used that tone of voice, it never meant anything good. Bolting backwards, he felt a surge of heat flush across his back as he was lifted bodily off the ground and thrust forward.

He was vaguely aware of a hard impact and a sharp pain in his chest. Slowly he realised the sharp pain came from his lungs; he was gasping for breath, his lungs burning as though he had just run a marathon. His limbs trembled as he attempted to push himself off the ground and he could feel a constricting weight forcing him back to the ground. For the first time, fear stabbed through his mind, waking him fully and he lashed out at whatever it was that bound him into place.

"Ow! Godammit... Peter!"

That was Ray yelling, he realised suddenly. So loudly, it was almost in his ear. A moment later, the engineer rolled into view and the pressure on his back suddenly eased. In relief, the psychologist slumped. "That's what you get for using me as a crash mat," he quipped weakly, slowly pushing himself up to his knees and looking around.

The courtyard in which they had been standing was a sooty, dishevelled mess, as if a smog-bank had rolled through the area and deposited all that it carried before moving on. Taking several more deep breaths and finding it easier to breathe with every passing moment, he forced himself to his feet, searching for his team.

Winston and Ray were already climbing to their feet and Egon was helping Janine to stand up. For the most part, they looked charred, sooty and dazed but otherwise unharmed.

"Egon. Do I want to know what that was?" Peter's voice was deceptively mild.

"The combined force of the throwers created an energy build-up in the wind barrier. When it reached critical mass, it exploded," Ray said with a weary glance towards Egon.

"Essentially correct," the physicist agreed.

"So the barrier is down?" Winston demanded

"Yes."

Peter's eyes narrowed. "Everyone okay?"

There were nods from the three men and an angry growl from Janine. "Ready to rock," she snapped, an irritated glint in her eye that made the psychologist smile. She hated being dragged through the mud as much as Peter did.

"Alright, let's finish this." He cocked his thrower and began to move forward, flanked by the three armed Ghostbusters.

As they entered the garden for the first time since it had opened to the public two days ago, Peter came to an abrupt halt. He couldn't help it. For the first time, he had a good look at the garden - a beautifully laid out Moroccan design with just a hint of Oriental influence. It was wide, spacious and would have been relaxing in any other situation.

Now, however, a body blocked his path. He couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. He couldn't tell what kind of clothing the victim had been wearing. He couldn't even tell if they had ever had hair or what height they had been in life. With a strangled gasp, he turned his eyes away but found his gaze settling on another body. A smaller one but it was just as hard to establish features.

Without thinking, he stumbled back a step as he became aware of the other four bodies, realising with horror that the one he had noticed first was the least injured one; that the others were barely identifiable as _human_.

It was then the smell now permeating the garden hit him and his knees caved as if he had been hit with an iron bar. Something clamped around his arms and dragged him back but he was too stunned to struggle. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the sound of someone retching and wondered vaguely if that was him.

"PETER!"

His eyes snapped into focus as he suddenly realised Winston was nose to nose with him, shaking him.

"You okay, man?" he demanded, his tone panicked.

"Winston," Peter croaked. "You look like crap."

"I'm prettier than you, Flyboy," was the relieved retort.

Peter swallowed and tested his weight. He was still standing, he realised. And he wasn't going to crumple into a heap as soon as Winston let go of him, although he was certainly shaking like a leaf.

He took a deep breath then another and slowly felt his mind begin to wake up. He swallowed thickly. "Okay... that was... that..."

"Yeah." Winston's voice was too quiet.

He turned slowly, looking for the others. Janine was the one who was on her knees retching, he realised. Not that he could blame her, his own stomach was still churning restlessly. Ray and Egon were with her, so he couldn't immediately tell what state of mind they were in.

"How are they?"

"You and Janine saw most of it. They were too busy getting you two out to pay much attention."

_They_. The psychologist lifted his eyes, searching Winston's face intently. The mechanic swallowed thickly and looked away. Peter gripped his arm tightly in understanding then made his way over to the others.

"Is everyone okay?" Peter asked.

Ray looked up slowly. His face wasn't white, it was grey. A horrible, lifeless shadow that accentuated every line and crag of his face and his eyes were so dark they were almost black, shining brightly with unshed tears. "What are we going to do, Peter?" the engineer whispered.

As if it had been on a time-delay, a small explosion seemed to detonate in the back of Peter's mind, white-hot rage surging through his veins.

"We're going to kill the son of a bitch who did this!" His vicious growl was enough to make even Janine look up. She looked fragile, almost hollow, and was trembling violently.

"You got that right," Winston whispered, hefting his thrower. "That thing's just made this personal."

Egon glanced uneasily between the four of them and knelt back on his heels. "I think that would be a mistake," he said with characteristic bluntness. "Given the events that have taken place recently, it would be logical..." he trailed off as four pairs of eyes suddenly pierced him, stilled into speechlessness by the rage in each of their faces.

"How can you say that, Egon?!" Ray exploded suddenly. "Didn't you _see_ what's in that garden?! We've got to end this now! Before that happens again! You said it yourself, we're the only ones who can stop it from destroying the world! The barrier is down now but what if it comes back just because we walked away and left the demon alone?! It would be _our_ fault, Egon! _Our_ fault for not stopping it when we had the chance because we were too afraid to step into that garden. It's not like you have to go back in there anyway! You can stand out here and not have to worry about what happened in there. _We're_ the ones who are going to have to go back in there, not you! You may be a smart man but you haven't been in there, you don't know what you're talking about!"

Egon stiffened, anger flaring in his eyes. Peter stepped forward before it could escalate. "Barrier's down, we can hurt him, Egon," he said quietly. "You know Ray's right. We have to do this _now_."

The physicist's eyes narrowed. He glanced from Ray's unrepentant glare to Peter's expression of false calm and the anger drained away to be replaced by something so cold that the psychologist experienced an involuntary shiver. Egon nodded abruptly in agreement and rose stiffly to his feet, picking up his P.K.E. meter once more.

Janine pushed herself to her feet, grim and pale but determined as she looked at the four of them.

"Ready for this, Janine?" Winston asked her softly.

"I'm a Melnitz," she whispered, letting her own anger surge. She needed that rage. She needed it to keep the fear and horror at bay long enough to do what they needed from her and she needed to do it now. Before she could dwell on what she had seen, before the fear became stronger than the anger. Before she lost her nerve and fled.

"You go, girl." He managed a smile for her then turned quickly to face the garden. She stepped up next to him, trying to pretend it was just another bust, that what was in there didn't exist and felt the comforting presence of Ray flank her on the other side. Peter moved into position and with a grim nod, ordered the advance.

Their plan was simple. Ignore the bodies, concentrate on the trees and as soon as the cedars came into view, blast them. Side by side, they stepped through the entrance, locked onto the trees and their throwers leapt into life.

Fire exploded around the two trees, leaping in an arc that was reminiscent of an electric current. As each Ghostbuster throttled up to full power, the trees themselves became obscured by the blinding heat radiating from them. Eventually, unable to stand the increasing temperature, the four began to retreat, shutting off the streams and blinking as they regained their focus.

The two trees were unharmed.

For a moment, they stared at them. "Again!" Peter snapped grimly, raising his thrower.

"Peter! Three o'clock!" Egon shouted behind him.

The psychologist swung around and his thrower activated automatically at the shadow that swept towards him. With an unearthly scream of rage, it banked off, aborting its attack to take up position a little further away. Peter adjusted his aim and prepared to fire again when a strangled cry escaped Ray, a sound that almost seemed to echo the noise the ghost had just made.

"Oh my God, Peter! There's six of them!" he exclaimed in horror.

"So?" Peter wasn't in the mood for puzzles.

"They're the people, Peter," Winston whispered in horror. "The people Humbaba killed."

Peter's hands trembled and he lowered the thrower. Sure enough, there were six ghosts. Ghosts that looked remarkably human until he looked at their faces, into the hollows where eyes should have been. Ghosts without a soul, as if everything that had once made them human had been ripped out of them, leaving only a mockery of what each of them had once looked like in life.

And they were hovering next to the two trees as if...

Peter swallowed. "They're _protecting_ it. The thing that killed them," he whispered. It was too much even for him.

"Any violent death can create a ghost," Egon said softly from behind them. "They could no more break through the wind barrier in death than they could in life and were consumed by the demon that now controls them."

There was no surprise in that tone, Peter noticed absently. "You knew this already, didn't you Egon?"

"Yes." Egon's voice was sad.

There was a slight puff from Ray, as if he had just been kicked in the stomach. "That was the logic you were trying to explain to us?" he sounded sick. "I thought..."

"It doesn't matter," the physicist said roughly. "You're going to have to trap them."

"Can't we help them disperse peacefully?" Winston asked reluctantly. "Don't you think they've suffered enough?"

There was silence. Egon didn't answer and the ghosts were lining up as if readying themselves for a charge.

"We can't," Ray whispered in horrified realisation, watching those hollow faces turn towards them, seeing the truth written across their insubstantial features. "Even if we could free them from Humbaba, they're completely mad. There's no chance of dispersal for them. They wouldn't understand."

As if on some unseen cue, the six ghosts seemed to join hands and began to wail, a piercing keening that seemed to rise like the wind. The air began to stir into life, slowly picking up speed. On the breeze came a chill, biting their skin and searing them to the bone.

"They're rebuilding the wind barrier!" Egon snapped. "You have to trap them now!"

"This sucks," Peter whispered, raising his thrower once more and firing. The ghosts scattered and spun around to attack, dodging the stream. Catching one of the ghosts, he was forced to let it go and dive to one side as the ghosts swirled around him. He yelled in surprised pain, feeling a cold, icy touch slide through his body as if he had been stabbed through the chest with an icicle.

As the ghosts mobbed Peter, Winston caught one of them from behind, tossing in a trap. With screams of rage, the remaining five scattered again and Peter dropped to his knees, gasping for breath. Even from where he was standing, Winston could see the psychologist's skin had taken on a cold, blue sheen.

Ray shouted a warning for Peter to move as he caught a second one but the psychologist didn't seem to hear. Janine ran forward, her thrower scattering the four remaining ghosts before they could touch him again. One ghost circled, charging straight for her. With a startled yelp, she opened fire and caught it dead centre.

"Hold it!" Ray yelled from the other side of the ghost.

Janine gritted her teeth. The ghost was writhing violently within the stream and maintaining the snare was taking everything she had. "How much longer, Ray?" she demanded, her voice trembling with effort.

"I've got the trap!" he replied, tossing it into the firing line.

Feeling as though she was been shaken apart at the seams, she fought it every step of the way as it howled with protest. As she finally wrestled it over the trap, its skeletal face at last seemed to locate its tormentor and she froze as those charred, empty sockets burned into her eyes. Unable to breathe, she could feel herself being drawn into that black, soulless stare, dragged away from the noise and light around her until only empty silence remained.

"_Janine! Now!_" Ray's voice was a scream that shattered the moment like an opera singer hitting high C in a room full of mirrors. With a gasp, she found herself once more back in the garden, struggling with the ghost. With a last heave, she threw the creature into the light and heard the hiss of a full trap closing.

_Who turned the heating off?_ She wondered vaguely as she looked around for more ghosts. She couldn't see any but there did seem to be a lot of shouting. She heard Winston yell out something about midday that she didn't quite catch. _That's funny,_ she mused thoughtfully. _I could have sworn it was later... ow!_ Her thoughts scattered as something hard impacted with her body. _OW!_ she thought again, more insistently as she felt the impact again, this time harder, more unyielding. She looked up but her neck muscles groaned in protest. Whatever had hit her was icy, her body didn't like this cold but had no strength with which to push away. _Never mind_, she told herself sleepily. _I'll just wait a few minutes and try and again._

The sound of something sparking on the edge of her hearing caught her attention. She contemplated ignoring it but, a moment later, she felt the heat that followed. Warmth. Someone had lit a fire nearby. She could use some of that right about now, she decided. With a groan of protest, she forced herself to turn around and move in the direction of the heat, grudgingly admitting that it was becoming easier to walk the closer to the fire she came.

When she entered the pool of light, however, the fire wasn't what she expected. For a start there were two of them, set in circular firepits. The second thing she noticed was that the flames were a bright, incandescent blue and although she could feel no wind, they danced insistently in front of her, drawing her in with an almost irresistible force.

"Blue fire," she mumbled. "Pretty."

"Janine?"

With a startled yelp, she found herself staring into Egon's eyes. He looked, she was forced to admit, absolutely furious although why was a complete mystery to her.

Also a mystery was what she was doing lying flat on her back as he knelt beside her. Her own particle thrower was balanced awkwardly in his injured arm, as he fought to control its aim with his good hand. A little confused, she tried to rise but found her limbs unresponsive. Her muscles were shaking and she sank back in disbelief. When on earth had it become so cold in here?

"Don't move," Egon growled and fired, the particle beam far too close to them both for comfort. Then he shouted, his tone fierce. "Got him, Winston!"

"Clear!" The mechanic yelled back and the sound of the trap hissing shut echoed through the garden as the last ghost sank from sight. The physicist sagged next to Janine, pain etching deep lines into his face before he pulled himself together and looked up sharply.

"Peter's unconscious," Ray said tersely. "What about Janine?"

"Conscious," Egon replied. He glanced down at her again, the pain retreating from his face as the rage once more took centre stage in his expression. "Janine, do you know where you are?" he asked and his voice sounded harsh to her ears.

She swallowed, her mouth was so dry she found herself wondering when the last time she had a drink was. "Garden," she managed. "Brooklyn."

He nodded but didn't seem particularly relieved. "Can you stand?"

"Too... cold," she mumbled, trying to rise anyway. Egon grabbed her and helped her to her feet but her knees gave out almost immediately. She couldn't feel the ground beneath her and was barely aware of what her feet were doing.

However, she could feel the heat being generated by his body and turned into it almost instinctively. "Humbaba dead?" she asked hopefully.

"No," he replied shortly and she could hear the rage flaring in his voice again. She winced and almost fell once more. The only thing that held her upright was his steel grip.

"Sorry," she mumbled, feeling the ice in her soul take root at the hostility that she could feel racing through his body.

He didn't respond and she didn't expect him to. She didn't know what the expression on his face was; she couldn't bear to meet his gaze, finally understanding why he was so angry. She had compromised the team. They had needed her to be the fourth thrower and she hadn't been up to the job. Now Peter was down, she was barely able to move and Egon had been forced to take up the slack despite his injury. They only had two healthy Ghostbusters and it was all because she hadn't been able to handle a bunch of 2-day old Class III ghosts.

"Guys, we need to get out of here!" Ray exclaimed in alarm. "The barrier's coming back up!"

"What?!" Winston demanded. "How?! We busted the ghosts!"

"Debate it outside!" Egon snapped. In one swift move, he unceremoniously heaved Janine into a fireman's lift and headed out of the garden as fast as he could. Just a few steps behind him, Winston and Ray hefted Peter's body between them and followed.

The five tumbled into an ungracious heap in the courtyard hearing the howl of the wind as the barrier exploded into full force behind them.

Carefully, Ray backed away and activated his P.K.E. meter, scanning the new barricade. His face fell as he watched the meter smoking in his hands.

"How bad?" Winston asked apprehensively.

"It's stronger than the last one," the engineer said softly.

"But we can take it out like we did the last time, right?"

Ray shook his head and sighed. His sooty face was tear-streaked and unnaturally pale. He looked ready to collapse with exhaustion. "Not a chance, Winston. I don't know how we're going to get through this thing now."

"You mean... you mean we just went through that... busted those ghosts... for _nothing_?!" The mechanic looked appalled.

"I don't know what to say, Winston," tears were beginning to form in Ray's eyes again. Tears of frustration, anger, helplessness and a whole host of emotions he couldn't have put into words. "But I think we've just made things worse."


	8. Cracking at the Seams

**Author Notes:** Thanks to SapphireMind for agreeing to put up with my quirky sense of humour long enough to make sure the medical aspects and crazy Americanisms sounded legit and for beta-ing other parts of this story too. :)

* * *

**Chapter 7: _Cracking At The Seams_**

_"Watch a man in times of... adversity to discover what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off." -- Lucretius, 'On the Nature of Things.'_

Winston paused in the middle of the page and blinked. For a moment, he didn't move, then he back-pedalled a page. Eyes scanning the text he frowned and began flicking through several pages. With an exasperated sigh, he tossed the novel down on the couch and rose, stretching his cramped muscles restlessly.

He turned around to find Ray watching him sympathetically from over the top of the _Tobin Spirit Guide_.

"Gotta be the first time I've never paid attention to the plot of a whodunit," Winston sighed wearily.

"It's almost time to go to the hospital anyway," the engineer replied, putting down the book he had been pretending to read.

"Good. It's about time," Winston said flatly, eyes turning to the clock as if to confirm what Ray had just said.

The first thing the Ghostbusters had done after getting out of the garden had been to drive to the hospital as fast as possible. There had been a very tense moment with the press, who had witnessed them carry both Peter and Janine out of the building and tried to question them. But one terse statement from Egon warning them to get out of the way had made them back off. Struggling with Peter behind him, Ray and Winston hadn't seen the physicist's face but they had heard the unusual edge to his voice and it had worried them. It must have startled the press as well because they refrained from asking any more questions.

Once into Ecto-1, Ray had driven with all speed to the hospital, where Peter and Janine had been treated for hypothermia and shock. Peter had been in a worse condition than Janine and it had taken him several hours to come round. Although lucid, he had clamed up quickly when asked if he remembered what had happened and either changed the subject or lapsed into a light doze that effectively ended all conversation.

Janine had said nothing at all.

Egon had been taken away to get his injured hand checked out and his dressing changed. Upon returning, the three had been told to go home and not return until Peter and Janine were ready to be discharged. Apparently, the doctors were satisfied that Janine would be out of danger after 24 hours but hadn't quite made up their minds how long to keep her in for. Peter would be able to go home after a 48-hour monitoring period as long as he rested.

There wasn't really much chance of that. The news reports were completely focused on the drama unfolding at the botanical gardens and the latest revelation that two of the Ghostbusters had been rushed to hospital in a serious condition after their confrontation only seemed to emphasise the enormity of the crisis. It was only a matter of time before the Ghostbusters would have to confront it again, it wasn't going to stay in the gardens forever. They knew that. The doctors knew that. In fact, everyone knew it.

With little else to do, Ray and Winston had put their heads together and began working on ways to defeat the wind shield Humbaba had erected and find a way to take him out before he became mobile. Ray also began trying to work out a calculation to estimate how long they had before Humbaba became fully awake. They had tidied the rec room, cleaned the kitchen, did the laundry, double-checked Ecto-1 and the Containment Unit. In fact, they had done everything except talk about what they had seen in the garden and neither of them had actively tried to sleep.

What Egon had done in this time was a mystery to them. After his sharp retort to the press outside the gardens, he had said nothing more, not even to Janine and Peter when the Ghostbusters had been allowed to visit them. Initially, the pair had tried to approach him but every time they did, the physicist's pale blue eyes would become shards of winter ice and he would turn away. They didn't understand what was wrong but they did get the message that now was not the time to push him.

"Let's go," Winston sighed, hating the silence. "They won't care if we're a bit early, they'll just tell us to wait. That's all we'd be doing here."

Ray nodded in agreement but Winston was already moving towards the lab where Egon had holed himself up away from them. "You in there, buddy?" he asked, poking his head around the door to peer inside.

Egon was sat the computer, scrolling through some text with his good hand. He didn't respond to his friend's question but Winston's observant gaze noticed the broad shoulders stiffen.

"We're going to pick up Peter and Janine," he added. "You coming?"

For a moment, he honestly thought Egon would decline then the physicist rose and switched off the computer. He nodded once to Winston and quietly made his way down to Ecto-1 and Ray.

"Wiiiinston!" There was a sticky pop as Slimer dropped through the ceiling and floated to a stop in front of the mechanic's face, his huge orange eyes as large as saucers with need.

Winston studied him thoughtfully for a moment. "Slimer, you've got to promise me you _won't_ slime Peter or Janine when you see them. They're not very well. Do you understand?"

Slimer nodded emphatically. "Slimer understand," he confirmed solemnly. "See Peter better."

Winston smiled wearily. "Okay, Slimer. Come on."

The drive to the hospital was silent. Not even Slimer made a sound. He had been extremely quiet since the three Ghostbusters had returned alone. Obviously upset by the fact there had been injuries, he was also frightened by the strange, unfriendly behaviour the others were displaying and had decided to avoid them. He had even stayed away from the refrigerator.

Winston sighed. He was no psychiatrist but he had been through his own share of therapy after Vietnam and could recognise the warning signs of emotional trauma. He knew Ray was hoping everything would return to some semblance of normality when Peter and Janine returned home but he suspected the opposite would be the case. He glanced at Egon, wondering what was up with the physicist. As far as he knew, Egon had not had time to assimilate the fate of the six dead people in the same way the others had. He had either been outside the garden or reacting under the influence of adrenaline. At first, Winston had believed that Egon had dived into the garden to protect the fallen Janine and the mechanic had to admit the effort the physicist had made to reach her in time had been damn impressive. But when the last ghost had been trapped, Winston had managed to get a good look at Egon's face. The depth of the rage in those blue eyes had shocked him, as much because he didn't understand the trigger as because he had never before seen such dangerous passion in that particular gaze.

It was a relief when they finally arrived at the hospital and could direct their attention away from their internal thoughts and towards the staff instead.

"Ghostbusters for Doctor Peter Venkman and Miss Janine Melnitz," Winston announced quietly to a nurse. She nodded and quickly passed the message on, guiding them to the waiting room. Winston sighed as they took seats but it was only a few minutes before the doctor arrived to talk to them.

"The hypothermia wasn't as severe as we initially thought but it was bad enough," the doctor told them as he walked them to Peter's room. "He's not allowed to exercise or drink any alcohol or caffeine. Keep him on warm, sweet drinks and don't let him go anywhere cold for a while." He gave the three Ghostbusters a stern look then blinked and stared at Slimer. "What's that?" he demanded.

"Slimer." Ray said. He turned to the ghost. "Slimer, this is very important. Did you understand the doctor?"

Slimer nodded. "Peter stay warm."

"Yes, Slimer. Do you remember what Egon and I told you about how cold you are when you slime us?"

Slimer glanced nervously at the grim-faced Egon then turned back to Ray. "Slimer remember."

"Good. Because you aren't allowed to touch Peter or Janine, okay Slimer?"

Slimer nodded dubiously.

"Slimer? This is _very_ important. If you touch them, you could hurt them. You don't want them to be hurt, do you?"

"Nooooo!" The little ghost twisted his hands in distress, green slime dripping slowly to the floor. "Slimer won't hurt Peter and Janine!"

Ray smiled. "I know you won't, Spud. But remember: we'll tell you when it's okay to touch them again, okay?"

Slimer nodded, looking subdued. Even if he didn't fully understand why it was bad, he could feel how serious Ray was.

Ray turned back to the doctor, who was still staring at the ghost.

"That's a... a..."

"Yes." Winston said firmly.

"Oh," the doctor stared for a few more moments then seemed to pull himself together. "Alright. If you've understood that, you can go take him home," he began to move off, eyes still on the ghost.

There was a pause. "Um, Doc. What about Janine?" Ray asked.

The doctor paused. "Ms Melnitz?" At their nods, his eyebrows rose. "She was discharged after 24 hours," he said abruptly.

Winston and Ray gazed at each other, stunned. Janine hadn't called them to say she had been discharged? That wasn't like her at all. They both turned quickly to Egon, intent on asking him if she had phoned at all, but he looked as off-balance as they felt.

"Did anyone come to collect Miss Melnitz?" Apparently, the physicist was shocked enough to break his two-day silence.

The doctor considered that for a moment. "I believe she called her family to collect her."

Winston was the first to regain his composure. "Alright, let's get Peter home, then we track down Janine. Okay, Egon?"

Egon's eyes narrowed slightly. He was no paramedic but he was surprised to hear Janine had left the hospital early. He, like all of them, had been under the impression she would be kept under observation for the same length of time as Peter. Either the doctors had changed their minds or... His jaw tightened. He didn't want to contemplate the alternative. The alternative made his currently unpredictable mood even more volatile. "Yes," he said flatly and turned to enter Peter's room.

Peter was sat on the edge of his bed, swaddled in warm clothing. His dark green eyes peered out from under a rather tasteless woolly hat with obvious irritation. "I am _not_ walking out of here looking like a fashion statement for Lumberjacks Anonymous," he was complaining as they entered. "No way, no how!"

The nurse in front of him was looking serious. The one behind him was grinning broadly. "Doctor Venkman, this is for your own good. You have to maintain your core..."

"Yeah, yeah. But come on - do I _have_ to sacrifice the hair?!"

"It's alright, Peter!" Ray said, sympathetically rescuing the beleaguered nurse. "You don't have to walk out of here looking like that."

"Thank God!" Peter threw up his hands.

"Yeah, you'll be wheeled out!" Winston caught on with a grin, gesturing to the wheelchair beside the frustrated nurse.

Peter glared at him.

"No exercise, Peter," Ray said with an encouraging smile. "Just think. We'll have to wait on you hand and foot..."

"Your every whim catered for..."

"And Slimer's even promised not to slime you!"

"Yeah!" Slimer agreed quickly.

Peter eyed the three of them suspiciously then sighed. "Alright, alright. But there better not be any press outside. No-one's going to be writing headlines about this fashion disaster!"

"Absolutely," Ray agreed with a smile. "Come on, Peter, let's get you home."

The nurses rather gratefully gave up care of the irascible psychologist to his friends. Winston chuckled as he spotted their relieved looks as they drove away but his humour had faded quickly as his attention returned to the interior of the car. They were silent all the way home and as they settled Peter comfortably in the rec room.

"Okay, remote, sweet drinks. Food. Blankets. Pillows. Magazines. Anything we forgot?" Ray asked cheerfully, fussing around Peter like a mother hen.

"Yep," Peter said blandly. He waited for Ray to look up enquiringly and then pointed at his fellow Ghostbusters. "You. Sit. I want company. That's all of you, Egon!" He raised his voice and let it carry to the corridor, where he knew the physicist was lurking.

There was an audible sigh and Egon joined them. The psychologist gave them all a long stare. "Alright, who wants to tell Papa Venkman all about it?"

He watched in silence as the three grown men squirmed like naughty school children. Ray sighed and straightened. "Egon, did you phone Janine's parents?"

"Yes." Egon said and the engineer winced at the flat tone. "Her parents picked her up from hospital and dropped her off home yesterday."

Winston frowned. "So she's _not_ staying with her parents?"

"Apparently not."

"Did you phone her apartment?"

"Yes. No answer." Egon's voice was as icy as they had ever heard it.

Peter studied them thoughtfully. "Did Janine get... hit like I did?" he asked, oddly hesitant.

Ray returned his gaze and nodded. "Not as badly though. They let her out after 24 hours but she didn't call us. We don't know why."

"I think why is obvious." If it was possible, the temperature in Egon's voice had dropped even further.

They all stared at him, a little nervous of his obviously deteriorating mood. "Why?" Ray asked cautiously.

Cold blue eyes pinned him. "She left against medical advice."

"Why would Janine do that, Egon? She's an intelligent woman..." he trailed off and leaned forward sharply, worried, as Peter's eyes glazed over strangely. "Peter? You okay?"

The psychologist's gaze snapped back into focus. "Egon, go find her," he said sharply.

The three of them stared at him. "Peter? What's wrong?" Winston asked uneasily.

The psychologist took a deep breath. "I... I didn't want to say..." he stopped and his gaze defocused slightly. "Look," he said urgently. "I'll explain later. Just go and get her. _Now_. And make her pack a bag. She's staying at the firehouse until this mess is over," he glared at Egon's suspicious expression. "And don't take no for an answer, Egon. If you've got to drag her here in chains, then do it!"

Egon's eyebrows rose then he stood up abruptly and walked out of the room. "Wait!" Winston rose. "Ray, fill Peter in on what he's missed. I'll drive Egon. His hand is still shot," he raced after the physicist.

The edge to Peter's voice had upset Winston. The psychologist had sounded frightened by the idea that Janine wasn't at the firehouse and his refusal to explain until after they had found Janine gave wings to that fear. Enough for him to activate the sirens and blaze through the streets like they were chasing a ghost instead of an errant secretary who had decided not to tell them where she was.

Egon didn't object.

"We start with her apartment," was all the physicist had said when Winston had dived into the driver's seat. Apparently, he wasn't objecting to the company either. The mechanic sighed and hoped Peter would have some ideas on how to handle Egon's strange mood.

When they finally arrived at Janine's apartment, there was no answer to their repeated knocks and calls. Winston turned to Egon. "I guess she's not here," he sighed. "Where next?"

Egon pulled a P.K.E. meter out of his pocket and activated it, pointing it at the door. His mouth settled into a thin, hard line and he stepped up to the door. "Janine? It's Egon. I know you're in there. I have a P.K.E. meter calibrated to your biorhythms. You have one minute to let us in or I will break your door down with the fire axe that is situated 6 feet away from it. The cost of repairs will come out of your wages. Countdown begins..." he checked his watch. "Now."

Winston stared at Egon in astonishment. The physicist sounded as grim and determined as he had ever heard him and the strange, fierce gleam in that ice-blue gaze was beginning to frighten him. Egon was one of his best friends but right now, he barely recognised the man standing next to him. What on earth was wrong with him?

"Thirty seconds." Egon announced clinically to the door.

"Look, Egon..." Winston began but suddenly found himself silenced into speechlessness by a withering stare.

"Twenty seconds, Janine." There was silence, except for the faintest shuffle on the other side of the door. Winston glanced at Egon quickly to see if he had heard but there was no indication that he had. "Ten seconds."

Winston winced and found himself wondering why he wasn't trying to stop Egon. It only took a moment for him to comprehend what was really happening. The fear in Peter's voice that had so unnerved Winston was obviously haunting Egon as well. Finally, he understood that the physicist was utterly determined to carry out Peter's request - literally, if he had to.

And, as if he had just experienced an epiphany, Winston suddenly realised he was in full support of that.

"Time's up, Janine. Winston, hold my meter while I get the axe," and Egon did indeed hand the meter to his companion, turning away to retreat down the corridor, his expression absolutely unrepentant.

Egon paused and turned as he heard the bolts of the door being drawn back. Winston held his breath as it cautiously opened but it escaped in an explosive gasp when he finally laid eyes on Janine.

She was barely visible underneath the blanket that was wrapped tightly around her body. Her hair, an angry dishevelled mass around her shoulders, obscured much of her face but not enough to hide the dark circles underneath her eyes; the haggard, glazed expression that bespoke of lack of sleep and inner torment; and the minor tremor in the hand that held the door. Winston could also see a puffiness to her eyes and cheeks that indicated she had been crying recently.

"I didn't think you'd really do it," she murmured, noticing that Egon was standing next to the axe, one hand on the protective glass shield.

Egon didn't say anything. He stepped away from the axe and walked over to her. She let the door fall away, granting them access to her apartment but he stopped just inside the room. Holding her gaze with an intense stare, he gently brushed her hair out of her face as if to get a better look at her.

To both men, that gesture seemed to change something imperceptible within her, something that made her appear to wilt right before their eyes. Her face abruptly turned even whiter then flushed sharply and she swayed. Catching her before she could collapse to the ground, Egon gathered her into his arms as she burst into tears. He carried her to the couch while Winston closed the door behind him. When he turned back, he found the physicist looking in his direction, expression mirroring the concern and confusion the mechanic was feeling.

Winston shrugged helplessly and took a seat opposite the pair on the couch. As if an unspoken agreement had passed between them, neither man said a word, waiting for her sobs to die away slowly until she lay silent and exhausted in Egon's tight embrace, her face buried against his chest. No-one said anything for a long time. Janine neither looked up, nor did she stop trembling. Winston rose, walked to the window and looked down at the street and Ecto-1 below. It was beginning to get dark, he realised suddenly. Just how long had they been here?

He turned back to the couch observing that Egon's peculiar mood seemed to have evaporated, his attention now focused completely on comforting the distraught secretary. He smiled bitterly, wondering what it was about their relationship that seemed to restrict Egon to being publically affectionate only under such unpleasant circumstances.

Winston felt his heart suddenly spring into his throat as the phone leaped into life. On the couch, both Egon and Janine jumped as well.

"You want me to get that, Janine?" Winston asked as quietly as his racing pulse would let him.

Face still hidden, she nodded silently so he moved across to pick up the receiver. His eyebrows rose. "Ray! Hi... no, I don't know..._what_?!" He eyed his watch in surprise. "Wow! Yeah, Janine's with us. No, she won't be staying... damn straight she'll be staying at the firehouse." He looked at Egon, who nodded grimly, his expression uncompromising. "Yeah, no way will she get round either of us. How's Peter?" He paused, listening then glanced back at Egon suddenly. "Yeah. We'll sort that out as soon as we get back," he listened for a moment then sighed heavily. "No, she's not. Look, Ray, we'll be home soon, we'll talk then, okay?" He nodded once even though Ray wouldn't have been able to see the gesture. "Sure, man. Catch you in a bit," he hung up and glanced at Egon with a faint smile. "Ray was about to send out a search party."

"I didn't realise it was so late," Egon confessed.

"Sorry," Janine whispered.

"For what?"

"Wasting your time. Making things worse. I really screwed up, didn't I?"

The pair exchanged an alarmed look. Janine had always been a fiery, dynamic member of the team. Someone who was determined, confident and who gave as good as she got. Not even during the confrontation with the lotsabuck had Winston ever seen her self-esteem so shattered and he didn't like this new Janine at all. He knelt down beside the couch so he was on eye level with her. "Okay, this stops right here, right now," he said flatly. "You've got nothing to be ashamed of. You saved Peter's life, Janine. You caught one of those ghosts and drove the rest away from him. We needed you out there, you didn't do anything wrong. You did everything right. Why on earth would you think you screwed up?"

Her glassy gaze peered lifelessly at him and he found himself resisting the irrational urge to reach out and shake her until the old Janine came rushing back and punched him for being so insensitive. "If I didn't screw up, why was Egon so angry with me?"

Winston opened his mouth to answer but paused for a moment. Then he turned a glare on Egon, feeling all the frustration of the past two days boiling to the surface - it wasn't Janine who needed a good shake, it was Egon. "Good question, Janine. Well, Egon? Care to tell us what's been eating you for the past two days because I refuse to believe it's what Janine did back in the garden."

Egon sighed wearily and shifted his weight very slightly. "No." he agreed quietly. "Janine. I'm not angry with you and I never was. I _was_ angry in the garden but I was angry with myself. I will clarify why later but for now I need you to pack. We want you to stay at the firehouse until the situation with Humbaba is resolved."

She looked up uncertainly and he smiled faintly at her. He certainly didn't look angry, she decided and sighed. "How long?"

"We don't know," Egon replied. "Plan for a couple of weeks if you have to but you won't be living here."

Her eyebrows lifted at the note of finality in his voice and a familiar spark crept into her eyes. "Oh really, Doctor Spengler?" she retorted. "I'm not at work. You can't just waltz into _my_ home and start giving me orders on my own time!"

"I just did," he replied in an infuriatingly superior tone of voice.

She pulled back sharply and glared at him. His gaze was steady and determined but oddly gentle as well. Winston held his peace, intrigued; it wasn't often Egon was this emotionally honest. "I'm a reasonable, logical man, Janine. I'm at least willing to let you walk to the car. It's Peter who wanted you dragged back to the firehouse in chains."

"He _what_?!" her voice escalated as the familiar indignant protest returned in full force. "Just wait until we get back there! I'll make him regret he ever decided to let me stay over!" she rose from the couch, gathered the blanket around her and stalked off into her bedroom indignantly, muttering about all the things she'd do to the psychologist if he ever tried to carry out that threat.

Winston cast Egon a sidelong look, unable to stay silent any longer. "Well, homeboy, you're just full of surprises."

"Hm?"

"You really know how to press that woman's buttons, don't you?" He tried to bite back a grin.

"Yes," Egon said blandly. "I do."

Winston's grin froze. He had expected a muttered, embarrassed denial. Instead, the physicist casually removed his glasses and began to clean them. If Winston hadn't known any better, he would have called Egon's expression _smug_. He studied the physicist thoughtfully for a moment. "You know, Egon. We _are_ going to find out the truth about you and Janine eventually," he challenged.

Egon contemplated his glasses then put them back on his nose with a wry smile. "In that case, Winston," he replied placidly. "May the best man win."


	9. The Pale Cast of Thought

**Chapter 8: _The Pale Cast Of Thought_**

_"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action," -- William Shakespeare, 'Hamlet.'_

Doom.

The word echoed in her mind with the power of a metal vault slamming shut somewhere deep underground. Quickly, she scrambled to her feet and looked around. The only movement was the gentle sway of bushes in the breeze, the wet rustle of young leaves twisting restlessly above her. No birds sang, no insects chirped. Despite the animation, the garden seemed empty, devoid of life.

Cautiously, she began to move through the undergrowth. This was wrong. She wasn't meant to be alone, something was missing... some_one_ was missing and she had to find them. _Him_, her mind corrected.

She paused. Now why had she thought that? For a moment, she listened to the whispers of the trees around her. There was something dark to their conversation, something... angry. She was surrounded, alone, in hostile territory and a sharp icy chill began to seep slowly through her body. With a shiver of fear, she tugged the collar of her uniform to cover her neck and hurried forward. She had to get out of here.

A moment later, she pulled up short, raising her hand swiftly to stare at it. The hand that had reached out to unthinkingly push branches out of her path as she travelled. The hand that was now coated in a sticky, viscous substance that chilled her skin as if she was holding ice. _Ectoplasm_, she realised. _Slimer?_

She didn't say his name out loud. She couldn't force the word through her dry throat and chapped lips. She looked at her hand again. Grey ectoplasm. Not green. Not Slimer. Grey. Grey as the base coat on the firehouse walls. Grey as a storm cloud. _Grey as death_, her mind supplied helpfully.

Her gasp was involuntary and quiet but it seemed to freeze the landscape around her. Bushes stopped moving, trees stopped swaying. The silence pressed in on her tightly until she was certain every plant in the garden could hear the blood that was thumping against her eardrums. Something cold trickled slowly down the back of her neck, an icy caress that froze even her heart that rattled her ribcage so loudly. Even her breathing stopped.

Then she was moving, racing through the garden, slapping aside the bushes that interfered with her passage, ignoring the clammy feel of once familiar leaves as they touched her exposed skin.

She broke free of the undergrowth and skidded to a stop in the clearing, gasping for breath. Revelling in the feel of the warm sun that filtered down from the sky above driving away the chill that had taken her body hostage she sighed, lifting her head, allowing her muscles to relax slowly.

The warmth of the sun vanished with the finality of a glacial march as her eyes fell on the scene before her. Six bodies, laid out in a line, as if they had been standing to attention and knocked over, one by one, like toy soldiers. Frozen as if trapped in a moment of time, they were preserved in every perfect detail. A hand in the process of reaching out to touch something; eyelashes lowered midway through a blink; lips parted in arrested conversation; the rosy hue of embarrassed pleasure shading pale cheeks. Had it not been for their unnatural stillness, they might have seemed naturally asleep.

She edged forward, eyes peeled for a sign of what was wrong with them, something to explain how they had come to be like this. Something that could explain the inexplicable. But there was nothing to see. They looked as though they were all in perfect health.

Slowly, she reached out to touch the nearest body, to press her hands against the skin. Unsure of what the sensation would be like, expecting to feel the cold stiffness of death, she braced herself and took a deep breath but when her fingers finally grazed the skin, it felt pliant, alive. There was more warmth here than in her own body. _How was that possible?_ She wondered vaguely, looking at the still face in awe.

Then the eyelids flashed open. In the blood-stained sockets where eyes had once stood, the answer was clear to see and, unable to stop herself, she began to scream.

Something sharp and painful pierced her ears, causing her to jerk back but she found herself held in place by an immovable trap. Warm, unyielding, it snaked around her upper body, binding her arms and making it difficult to breathe. Her scream died away in a ragged gasp as she fought for air and her awareness of the garden began to fade.

Slowly, eyes swam into view and found focus. A pair of very worried eyes, their normal olive green shade almost black with emotion. She could hear her name being repeated in her ear over and over and felt her awareness expand to include the hoarse throb in her throat, the weight pressed on top of her and the pressure of the old couch springs digging into the small of her back. He wasn't the tallest Ghostbuster but he was definitely heavier than she had expected him to be.

"Peter?" she mumbled in confusion, feeling the dull throb flare into a searing ache as she forced her voice to work.

"Janine?" he sounded breathless, as if he was trying to recover from strenuous exertion.

"If you don't have a good reason for being up close and personal I'm gonna put you in traction."

Relief lightened the colour of his eyes, followed swiftly by a flush of embarrassment as her words sank in. With a tiny, sly smile that lasted only a second, he pushed himself off her and sat up.

She blinked sleepily. Her head was aching as if she had hit it in a fall and for the life of her she couldn't remember where she was or what she was doing lying on a couch. She watched as the psychologist flashed a strangely sheepish, apologetic look to someone standing just beyond her field of vision but his expression became oddly haggard as his attention shifted to watch her struggle into a sitting position.

She was in the rec room of Ghostbusters Central lying in a makeshift bed that had once been the two-seater couch. Nearby, the three-seater couch was also made out into a bed. Currently unoccupied, the hastily tossed blankets and pillows indicated it had been deserted in a hurry. Opposite her, the two comfy chairs were also submerged in a pile of pillows and sleeping bags. A pasty-faced Ray was struggling out of one, Slimer hovering over his head, gazing at her with huge eyes. By the door, Winston still held Egon's arm in a tight grip and the faces of both men mirrored the shock she had seen in Ray and Slimer's stares.

Everyone was in nightwear, including her. She leaned forward slightly as her memory returned. The confrontation with the ghosts, the hypothermia, being evicted from her apartment by Egon and Winston, the five of them deciding to camp out in front of the TV instead of separating to different rooms to sleep...

The dreams...

The breath left her lungs with an almost audible thump. Ice began to claw its way through her skin again as she remembered the gaze. The bloody, eyeless stare that had found her in the garden, that had followed her to the hospital, that was staring at her from the opposite end of the couch, leaning forward to grab her, to caress her with its deathly touch, to coat her with its ectoplasmic shroud...

"Janine?" Peter asked sharply, then started as she cried out in shock. "Janine!" he snapped and grabbed her quickly.

Her eyes refocused on him for a moment, then she reached up to press her hands against the side of her head, crumpling against the back of the couch. "Head hurts," she hissed.

"I'll get that!" Ray stumbled over his sleeping bag and charged past Winston and Egon before anyone else could react.

As the engineer clattered loudly in the kitchen, Winston released Egon and followed the physicist over to the others. He was just making himself comfortable on the coffee table when Ray returned with a glass of water and some painkillers.

"This should help," he said sympathetically as she gratefully knocked back the medication.

She shuddered. "Thanks," she muttered. She put the glass down and then gave them all a sharp stare. With Peter perched on the edge of the couch by her feet, Egon having shifted her pillow to make room for himself by her head, and Winston and Ray hovering around the coffee table, she was beginning to feel like she had been surrounded. "Guys, go back to bed," she said firmly. "It's just a bad dream."

"That didn't sound like 'just a bad dream'." Peter told her dryly.

"Yeah, Janine. You were screaming like you were being tortured." Ray's tone was concerned.

"You got that one right." Winston agreed firmly, spotting her flinch at Ray's words.

She twisted around on the couch until she was able to get a better look at Egon's expression. "I suppose you're going to side with them?" she demanded irritably.

"Yes." His voice sounded like a steel trap slamming shut in front of her face. Involuntarily, she found herself drawn back into the dream and she could feel the cavernous whispers that had narrated the litany of her fate begin pressing in on the edges of her mind. Her vision wavered and for a moment, she was back in the garden, staring at the eyes. The eyes that no longer existed.

"Janine!"

She blinked as she found herself staring into worried blue eyes, Egon's grip almost painfully tight on her shoulders. The weight of it was too much, she could feel it suffocating her and her muscles caved. She sagged as darkness claimed her vision and it took her tired brain a moment to register the fact that she had merely closed her eyes. "I can't do this a third time," she whispered, her voice drooping with exhaustion.

Egon's grip shifted as he enfolded her into a hug. There was silence for a few moments but the secretary didn't say anything more.

Winston glanced at Peter, expecting him to chime in with something either witty or psychological but nothing came. The psychologist was staring at Janine with a worn, unfocused gaze, as if he wasn't quite seeing her but watching something else that lay beyond her, something no-one else could see. The mechanic frowned uneasily. There was something familiar in Peter's eyes. Something he had seen in Janine's eyes at her apartment and which was clearly visible on her face now. Something lost, something... _broken_.

"Do what for a third time, Janine?" Ray asked at last, more intimidated by the oppressive silence than any answer he might receive.

"Dream," she mumbled into Egon's night-shirt. "I haven't slept... in..." she paused and with a visible effort lifted her head again. "Since the garden," she finished wearily.

The engineer shifted uncomfortably as she turned her tired gaze on him. Her eyes were normally an astonishing, vivid blue - almost lapis lazuli in their intensity. He had never seen anyone else with eyes quite that shade before but now they seemed pale, almost washed-out, like a cloudless winter sky after a snowstorm. It made him nervous, it made him remember... He swallowed. _Now,_ he told himself firmly. _If not now, never_. He sucked in a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "Three nights, Janine," he said softly. "And... and I haven't been sleeping either."

Aware that the others had turned all their attention on him now, he ignored them and plunged on. "I... I'm walking through the garden, enjoying the scents. I can smell roses, jasmine, fresh-mowed grass... the perfume of the women walking past me on the path..." he swallowed again. "Then I realise I'm asleep and I open my eyes but it's still dark and I can't see anything. But I can... smell... something. At first, it smells like fresh earth, a stale compost heap nearby. I think I'm back at Cousin Sam's farm. I can smell the cows outside so I sit up to close the window. But I'm not lying in bed, I'm lying on soil. I'm lying _in_ soil. I climb to my feet and the smell gets worse. It's all around me - in the air like smoke, in the earth, my clothes and hair stink of it. I try to get out of the hole by using a nearby stone to lever myself up but I can't get a grip and the stone slips..."

His face was white and his words tumbled over themselves. For a moment he didn't continue then he breathed once and forced himself to go on, this time at a slower pace. "It's a tombstone," he whispered in a shaky voice. "Here Lies Doctor Raymond Stantz... I'm sitting in a grave. _My_ grave." He stopped again and felt Winston grip his arm comfortingly. He tried to smile at the gesture but his lips refused to respond. "That's when I realise I'm not alone. I look up... and around me are six people. They look weird in the darkness, like they have a fake suntan... or maybe they're sunburned. Then I realise. They _are_ burned. They're burned... so badly..." he wavered, tears begin to form in his glazed eyes. "And it... it's that I can smell. The burns. The dead skin. The flesh..." his voice broke.

"Ray..." Winston began but stopped as Ray shook his head savagely and staggered on, his tone numb - as if he had promised himself that he wouldn't stop until he had said everything he wanted to say no matter how hard it was for him to say it.

"They are all smiling at me, leering and that's when they raise their shovels. Shovels filled with earth. They throw it on top of me and I fall back into the grave as they cover me with soil... only it's not soil. It's maggots. Living, swarming, _wriggling_..." his voice hissed in a sharp gasp. "And... and that's when I wake up!"

The silence in the room was thick with tension and it was Ray who broke it first. "It's the smell," he whispered. "I can't stop thinking about the smell. It's everywhere... the street, here, in the kitchen when I try and cook. I shower constantly. I've washed my uniform five times. But I can still smell it on me!" He sank his head into his hands and felt the weight of Winston's arm around his shoulders. "God, I can still smell it on me!"

"For me it's the eyes." Janine whispered softly, reaching out to touch his hand. "Everywhere I look, I can see their eyes," she managed a tremulous smile. "Except they don't have any eyes. They've been... they've been pulled out. There's black holes. Dripping blood. And they call to me, Ray. They want to drag me down there... into the dark. To be with them." She stopped, then squared her shoulders defiantly. "In the dark. Where the only sound is the blood dripping off the walls."

Ray squeezed her fingers gently then released her to run his hands through his hair and quickly wipe his eyes. "I could deal with this better if I could only get a few hours sleep. But every time I close my eyes..."

She nodded in understanding. "I can feel their eyes watching me even now," she admitted softly. She hesitated. "I thought it was just me."

"It's not just you," Winston said quietly. "I'm having them too." He nodded to Ray. "It's the smell. I've smelled it before. It's not death. It's beyond death. It's _neglect_. It's something I haven't had to face since 'Nam. And it was one of the hardest things I had to come to terms with when I came home." He released his grip on Ray and leaned forward, looking at both of them. "It's okay to feel disgust," he told them, his voice soft but firm. "It doesn't make you less human. No-one deserves what happened to those folks. There's nothing they can do now but it's okay for us to be angry for them. They _need_ us to be angry for them. _We_ need to be angry for them. Why else are we fighting this monster if not to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else?" He looked at Peter for confirmation and frowned again. There was no help from the psychologist forthcoming, he realised, nor would there be. Peter wasn't watching him, he was staring through him, lost in his own distant world, his green eyes reflecting horrors Winston didn't want to imagine. "Peter?" he asked.

The psychologist jumped and looked at him, eyes refocusing abruptly. "Yeah?" The tone was light enough but Winston wasn't fooled anymore.

"You're having them too, aren't you?" He asked bluntly. Sometimes the blunt approach was the only one that worked on Peter.

Peter shrugged. "Sure," he said easily and smiled a reassuring smile at both Janine and Ray. "It shows us we're human, that's all."

"And it's good to talk about it and get it in the open." Winston pressed on doggedly.

Peter turned his attention on Winston, emotions now locked behind his familiar cocky grin. "You said it, Doctor Zee."

The mechanic scowled at him. That grin hadn't reached the normally animated green eyes and this time, he wasn't going to let Peter get away with it. "So, how are _you_ sleeping, Peter?"

The psychologist's hundred-watt smile dimmed but managed to stay fixed in place. "Oh, you know. Between Egon's snoring, Ray's tossing and your mumbling, I'm not exactly getting my beauty sleep here. I'm thinking of getting a restraining order against you guys actually. Doctor Venkman being seen in decent society without his shut-eye? It's a public health hazard!"

Winston leaned forward. "How are the nightmares?" he demanded relentlessly.

"Bad smell, spooky eye sockets. Ray and Janine said it all." The psychologist's answer was quick and calm.

The mechanic gazed steadily at him and Peter stared defiantly back. Winston glanced across at Egon, who had been silent through the entire discussion. The physicist was gazing thoughtfully at Peter but met his gaze as the mechanic turned towards him. He nodded slightly and Winston returned his attention to Peter. "Okay, man, whatever you say."

His tone was agreeable enough but Peter got the message. Winston had only backed off because Egon had desired it. That didn't mean Winston was going to let the subject rest; that meant from now on, Winston and Egon would be joining forces to find out what he was hiding. He didn't want to talk. They were determined to make him.

And that was a confrontation Peter Venkman, Doctor of Psychology, wasn't looking forward to at all.


	10. Children of the Soul

**Chapter 9: _Children of the Soul_**

_"Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate accomplishments." -- Napoleon Hill._

_----- _

_"They're rebuilding the wind barrier!" Egon snapped. "You have to trap them now!"_

Them. The ghosts. The ghosts that had once been people. Living, breathing, intelligent people. People with families. Every person in there was someone's child, someone's parent, someone's spouse. People who would turn to him and ask him what had happened, what meaning there was to any of this senseless slaughter. They would ask him why he hadn't been able to see this coming; why it had taken so long to identify the threat; why they had died.

He didn't have the answers to any of those questions. He even had one more of his own. These people, these people that he had to bust like some kind of otherworldly hate-filled demon: it should have been Humbaba in those traps, not people. People who had committed no crime except to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

How could he tell those families their loved ones were not just dead but that, instead of moving on to wherever it was peacefully dispersed human spirits departed to, their souls rested in a transdimensional prison that contained all the evil and insanity the Ghostbusters had ever protected the world from?

No-one deserved that fate.

In the moment it took a heart to beat a single time, Peter assimilated the impact of Egon's commands, the consequences of his actions, and found himself unable to articulate the sheer magnitude of the decision he was being forced to make.

"This sucks," he whispered and it utterly failed to express everything he was feeling. Instead, he raised his thrower and fired, determined to complete this job as swiftly as possible so that he could unleash his rage on Humbaba, the demon who had forced him - _them_ - into this situation.

In service to the one who had destroyed them, the ghosts had no intention of making it easy for him. Frustrated, he watched as they scattered, moving into position to attack, dodging his stream with ease. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a sign of movement. At first thinking it was one of the others, he quickly realised everyone was accounted for. Only Egon was behind him, at the entrance to the garden, and therefore not in view at all.

There was definitely something else there, however, something standing in between him and Egon. Skin prickling with fear, he tried to turn to get a better view of whatever was lurking at the corner of his vision but was jerked to a halt as his stream caught one of the ghosts, almost by accident it seemed. Swiftly, the six converged on him and his vision blurred behind a dizzying, dancing fog. Something touched him then, an icy-cold sensation that rested for the briefest moment on the back of his neck before it pushed forward, seeping through his skin and into his blood, pulsing through his body like a relentless arctic river, spreading that frozen chill through his body in a slow glacial march.

As the numbness spread, he could feel the thrower, now impossibly heavy, slipping from his grasp. Fortunately, the ghosts suddenly deserted him, leaving gasping for breath he couldn't quite draw and fighting to regain sensation in his frozen limbs. The fog dissipated slowly and he quickly turned to see how the others were doing.

He was alone.

He was standing below an open, starless night sky on a dusty plain that seemed to stretch on forever in three directions. There were no ghosts, no Ghostbusters, he couldn't even find any evidence for the existence of New York City.

There was one thing that broken the monotony of the empty plain. In front of him, the earth dropped away into blackness, a sheer drop that gave him a sensation of vertigo just contemplating how deep the cliffs might go. And he _was _curious he realised suddenly. Curious to see how far down the black pit extended; to know what was at the bottom; to see if the answers to his questions could be found in the anonymous depths. The desire, the _need_, was burning through him with a heat so great it felt almost as cold as the ghostly touch that had numbed him previously.

He looked around, searching the ground for something he could throw into the pit and discovered there was very little available. The plains were almost impossibly flat. There were no mountains, no hills, no rocks; not even the meandering twist of a riverbed scarred the landscape. His location reminded him of the Great Plains but if there had ever been grassland here it was long gone now. This was a hard, baked earth, parched of water and the soil, dried to the consistency of sand, hung over everything like the dust that coated a forgotten tomb.

With a sigh, he patted himself down and located a coin in one of his pockets. Glancing quickly at it to ensure it wasn't the old battered two-headed coin his father had once given him, he tossed it into the yawning black chasm and waited for the metallic tinkle that would indicate it had reached the bottom.

It never came.

"You could always go down there yourself," a voice mused unexpectedly.

Peter yelped in astonishment as the silence shattered and realised there was someone standing at his side. He scowled and looked around but his environment was unchanged. He was alone, in the middle of a barren wasteland staring into a mysterious abyss that called to his soul with a siren song he was finding difficult to ignore. He stared hard at his new companion, a frail old man, and swallowed hard as he realised he could see right through the thin, wiry frame.

The ghost turned to stare at him and the psychologist froze, words he had been about to speak dying on his lips.

The face was haggard, drawn by lines that testified to a harsh existence. A confusing array of emotions played across the angular features - sadness, pain, anger, hate, hostility, sympathy; all of which seemed focused solely on Peter. Something tingled along the length of the Ghostbuster's spine, a wisp of emotion or a hidden instinct, that told him he was in danger and to back away now before he was lost, before this ghost could touch him.

An instinct that had everything to do with the eyeless sockets that gazed into his face, twin caverns that seemed to reflect the soulless void of the canyon he was standing next to. It looked like one of the six ghosts that had been protecting Humbaba but at the same time he knew it wasn't one of the faces that had encircled him on entering the garden.

Almost before he had a conscious awareness of what he was doing, he took one sharp step backwards and brought his thrower up defensively in front of him. "Whoopie-ti-yi-yo, little dogie," he muttered. "You just hold still while Venkman the Vaquero brings you in to market."

A harsh rasp stirred the lifeless air as the ghost sighed and pursed impatient lips. "Won't work." The voice was dry and brittle, as if the ghost wasn't used to speaking.

"Oh yeah?" Peter challenged. "Well, this is my girl, Ol' Betsy, and all I have to do is throw this here switch and rope you in to join the great ghost ranch in the sky... well, the basement anyway," and to prove his point, he thumbed the switch and braced himself for the recoil.

The ghost leaned forward slightly as the proton gun stuttered briefly into life and then died. "No-one ever believes me when I say that," its breath scraped through the air again and the hollow face lifted to look into Peter's eyes.

Peter wasn't looking at the ghost. He was staring at the thrower in shock. "C'mon girl, it's me, Petey Venkman!" He shook the weapon gently, then pressed the switch again but the gun didn't even twitch this time. "That's the last time I ever put Ray on recharge duty during a cartoon monster marathon," he growled and glared at the ghost.

The ghost smiled at him. The psychologist wasn't entirely sure whether the gesture was meant to be friendly or put the fear of God into him but it was working extremely well at doing the latter. Slowly, the creature began to speak. "I am the inevitable," it announced in a grating whisper. "I am your guide into the darkness, your eyes when you cannot see, your..."

"Look," Peter broke in firmly, waving the ghost into silence with his useless thrower. "You obviously have this little pep talk all worked out and I appreciate the effort, I really do but I'm gonna let you in on a little secret here. I'm not the one who's optically challenged, so if you don't mind, the sooner you get to the point the sooner I can leave."

"Leave? There is only one road," the ghost pointed into the abyss. "And you will need me to get you there."

Peter stared at the ghost, then at the canyon. He could feel the dizzying height of the cliff from four feet away, the light-headed sensation that made him feel as though he was floating several inches off the ground, drifting into the straining embrace of that unyielding darkness. His breath hissed and he scooted back a few feet from both the ghost and the edge. "That's not a road, that's a one way trip into a bad Nigel Kneale spoof! I know I did that 'World of the Psychic' show but seriously, that was a money spinner. A _bad_ money spinner. More of a filler really. The point is, I ain't going down there, Mister, and you can't make me!"

"I'm not here to give you a choice. I'm here to tell you what is." The ghost was starting to lose patience now. "I'm not big on metaphysics so I'll put it to you straight. Life has one purpose and nothing that lives can escape it. There's only one great question. When?" That haggard, broken face seemed to glare sternly at the stubborn psychologist.

Peter could feel the blood draining out of his face and with the retreating warmth, the forgotten chill returned in full. This wasn't happening. This conversation wasn't happening. He had been injured in the garden, maybe badly. His subconscious was afraid and projecting those fears into a form his conscious mind could understand. He wasn't dead. He wasn't dying. This conversation was _not_ happening!

He rounded on the ghost, preparing to launch into a powerful, eloquent speech, full of logic derived from years of psychological experience but the words that formed on his lips failed to materialise in the air.

Behind them, the battle raged. The six ghosts surrounding and mobbing the cold, drained figure slumped on the ground. His eyes scanned the scene frantically. It wasn't... it couldn't be...

_No!_ His voice was a mindless shriek inside his head, unvocalised only because his throat no longer seemed to function.

_An out-of-body perception is the penetration of subjective awareness into the transdimensional reality._ He could hear his professors at Columbia University reciting the mantra. He could hear himself, standing in their place, lecturing the students when his time for research had come. But he had never experienced it himself; had never believed it truly possible; had always doubted those who had claimed to have experienced it.

He closed his eyes and fought for some semblance of control, something he could cling long enough for him to regain his sense of self. _It is an established fact that the incidents of the OBE correlate highly with medical diagnoses of sleep paralysis in a phenomenon now known as projective catalepsy._ Unbidden the thoughts floated into his mind and he felt a wild giggle rising as he realised his logical mind sounded a lot like Egon's dry, scientific monologue. Sternly he clamped down on the unstable emotions and fought to concentrate on everything he knew about the situation he was now in. _Projective catalepsy, a benign phenomenon not known to be linked to pre-existing health conditions, has been known to catalyse the sufferer's extrasensory perceptions. There, Venkman, you're not dead. You're not dying. No known pre-existing health conditions. See? Stop acting like a girl and wake up!_

His eyes snapped open and disappointment flooded him, disappointment that carried with it the bitter tang of fear. He was still standing apart from the struggle, watching the ghosts mobbing the body. He could see the flash of uniform as a leg kicked out, the unruly hair that tumbled into the dusty soil. The ghosts were dragging the body closer to the cliff. In moments they would disappear into the black void that Peter had struggled to resist. Soon, it would be over and the struggle would cease. Forever.

_Whoa, back up there, buddy!_ His mind froze and backtracked swiftly as he stared hard at the battle raging in front of him. The uniform wasn't brown, it was pink. The hair wasn't brown, it was red. _Oh God..._ it wasn't an out-of-body experience, after all!

But he suddenly found himself wishing it was.

"Janine, I'm coming!" He yelled, finding his voice at last as he rushed forward. Forgetting his thrower had failed him once before, he took aim and fired. The recoil almost knocked him off his feet as the proton stream surged forth, scattering the ghosts.

"Janine!" He gasped again as she teetered on the edge of the cliff. Ignoring the ghosts, he dived across the ground, calling forth years of college football experience as he strained to reach her before she was lost to the darkness forever and somehow, he felt his hands close on hers, felt her hands close on him, felt them tumble together into the alien night...

And felt their slide come to an ungracious halt.

Breathing harshly, he opened his eyes and looked around. They had stopped only a few feet below the edge of the cliff. Peter's proton pack was snagged against something. The straps around his shoulders and waist were unbearably tight, cutting off the circulation in his body but he didn't dare move. They were taking the entire weight of two adults and two proton packs. He didn't want to think about how heavy they all were, to do so might encourage whatever luck was with them to desert. Even now, he could hear the material creaking ominously.

He glanced down and found Janine's wide blue eyes fixed unwaveringly on his. "Hold on, Janine," he said softly. "We'll get out of this."

She nodded silently, as if she didn't trust herself to speak and even that movement made his pack shift and their position slide a little. He held his breath and below him heard the secretary do the same. He swallowed and closed his eyes. Supporting the weight of Janine and her proton pack was straining his shoulders. Already, they were aching with fatigue and he knew that if he didn't get them out of this soon, either his grip or his proton pack would fail and they would both tumble into the abyss and die. Slowly, carefully, he looked around, observing that there did actually seem to be a path carved out into the cliff sides. A path made of dead and decayed tree roots, roots that seemed to have snagged his proton pack and were the only things standing between them and death.

Pushing his fear as far back as he could, he concentrated on locating the nearest roots that looked like they could support Janine's weight. To his relief, there were several nearby. With some effort on both their parts, she should be able to make it. He winced as he felt his straps strain again and looked back at Janine. "Your left, two o'clock," he whispered harshly. "Think you can make it?"

She rolled her eyes to the left as if too afraid to move anything else. After a moment, she swallowed thickly and nodded very slightly. "Good. Don't look down, Janine." He waited for her agreement, then braced himself, knowing he was going to have to take her weight no matter what happened. He didn't know if the roots would hold her and the pack both but neither of them could spare a hand to release her pack and ease the load.

Soil poured into the depths below as she struggled for purchase and despite his advice to her, Peter found himself watching the descent of the earth as it tumbled, feeling his gaze being sucked into the pit, feeling the need to join it at the bottom, to let go and tumble peacefully through the air on black, feathered wings.

Janine's sharp cry brought him back to the present with a jolt and his grip tightened instinctively. She had slipped. His grip had relaxed and she had slipped. "Oh God, Janine, I'm so sorry," he whispered.

"Don't let go, Doctor V.," her voice was harsh, her blue eyes shining like clear mountain lakes with her fear.

"No chance of that, Melnitz," his voice was a growl of pain, effort and determination. "I don't pay you enough to die on me."

She smiled wanly and began to inch towards the purchase again, clinging to the roots for her very life but Peter saw immediately it wasn't going to work. The roots were strong, maybe even strong enough to take her weight but with the proton pack, it was more strain than they could bear. His shoulders were beginning to scream with the effort of supporting her and his hold slipped again. Gritting his teeth he hung on but his skin felt cold and clammy. Sweat, he realised, as his grip slipped again. He wasn't going to be able to hold on much longer. She was sweating too; it felt as though he was trying to grasp water.

"Doctor V.!"

He scrambled to improve his grip as she slipped again and felt his proton pack buckle. One of the straps was giving out he realised. If he went now, they'd both die. _Dammit, there has to be a way out of here!_ Desperately, he looked around. He was now at the limit of his reach, unable to move any further without committing suicide but it wasn't enough. He could see that immediately. The roots were giving way, no longer able to stand the extra stress of the proton pack. She was in no position to discard it herself and he couldn't remove it for her without killing himself in the process.

"Oh God!" she gasped, feeling the roots collapse around her.

"Janine, hold on!" he snapped furiously, knowing even as he said it that it was futile. There was nothing for her to hold on to. Nothing, except for him. Gamely she grabbed for him just as her section fell away from under her but his shoulders could no longer cope with the abuse to which they were subjected.

"PETER!" she screamed as his grip failed. The grip he had promised she could rely on. The grip that had been the only thing standing between herself and the abyss. Between herself and death.

The last thing he remembered seeing was the horrified reality of her own death dull her once bright eyes. But long after she had disappeared into the darkness - and each time he awoke from this recurring nightmare - the betrayal in her voice as she screamed his name continued to haunt his soul.


	11. Knights of Infinity

**Chapter 10: _Knights of Infinity._**

_"Most people live dejectedly in worldly joys or sorrows. They sit on the sidelines and do not join in the dance. The knights of infinity are dancers and possess elevation. They rise up and fall down again, and this is no mean pastime, nor unpleasant to behold." -- Søren Kierkegaard, 'Fear and Trembling.'_

Water, Winston decided, was God's gift to mankind. There was something about running water first thing in the morning that made a man feel human again. Others required coffee to rejoin the world of the living but not Winston. A hot shower followed by a clean shave and the mechanic was ready to take on the world.

His good mood ebbed slightly on entering the kitchen. Ray was the only person there, busily buttering toast. He looked haggard, as if he hadn't been able to wake up properly.

"You okay, Ray?" He sat down and began piling pancakes onto a spare plate.

The engineer smiled weakly. "I think I managed to get a few hours sleep last night," he commented ruefully.

Winston's dark eyes were intense as he studied him. "It's not enough," his voice was firm.

Ray stifled a yawn. "You won't get any arguments from me," he agreed. "But I'll live."

The mechanic studied his friend in puzzlement. Last night, Ray had been so shaken by his nightmares he had barely been strong enough to describe them to his closest friends. Now, despite his obvious exhaustion, his mood was almost cheerful. Winston didn't understand it. "You sure about that, Ray?" he asked quietly.

Ray looked up from his breakfast and studied Winston's face. The dark skin was etched deeply with lines of worry. Whatever nightmares were plaguing the mechanic, they were obviously not bad enough for him to suffer anything worse than an uncomfortable night and disrupted sleep. Of all of them, Winston had the most experience with handling these kinds of situations and that experience was showing through now. Winston was currently in a far better state of mind than everyone else in the firehouse.

But Winston knew it too and whatever advantage he had from his army experiences had been eroded by his obvious concern for his colleagues. Ray found himself wondering how much of the mechanic's sleeplessness was caused by the terrible things they had witnessed in the garden and how much of it was caused by the effect the situation was having on his friends.

Winston had been the last of their tight-knit group to join, arriving on the scene even after Janine. Just like the secretary, however, he had become an integral part of their family. His background was completely different to anything the three scientists understood - a stable family life, raised on physical labour and rigorous army training, Winston's world-weary experiences meant he technically had much more in common with the secretary than with the other three Ghostbusters. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, he had found a much-needed role to fulfil in their misfit organisation and from almost the first day he had made himself indispensable. Ray could barely remember what his life had been like before Winston's arrival and often found himself wondering how any of the three academics had managed to survive before the mechanic's steady, calming influence had entered their lives.

Ray smiled at him. "I'm sure, Winston," he tried to sound reassuring but knew he was too tired to pull it off. "It's what's going on in Peter's head we need to worry about," his smile became tinged with sympathetic understanding as he watched Winston run his hands through his tight, black curls with a weary groan.

"Something happened to him in the garden, Ray. Something he's not talking about."

"I know."

"Something he's afraid has affected Janine."

"I know."

Winston gave the engineer a sharp look. Ray grinned at him. "My nightmares are bad, Winston but that's _all_ they are." His smile quivered then faded completely. "But you heard Janine scream last night. And I saw the look in Peter's eyes when he woke her. What they're suffering, Winston - it's nothing I know anything about. I've had nightmares before. I had real bad ones after my parents died. I know I can survive them, I've done it before. But what's happening to them is something else and we have to help them. I _know_ it!"

Winston stared at Ray's determined face. The engineer didn't know it but Winston was in awe of him. Coming from an extremely physical, down-to-earth family, Winston had been raised to never fear the sweat and grind of an honest day's work and, just like his parents, had found a strange peace, even spirituality, in hard physical labour. He hadn't been the first member of his family to enter the army. His parents had been extremely proud of his decision but he hadn't fully understood why or what it all meant until he had found himself in the thick of the action, slowly being worn down by the grim reality of war. In Vietnam, he had learned another kind of strength existed. There, he had learned to see beyond physical appearances and see the strength of the soul. There, he had watched battle-hardened warriors collapse under the strain of the violence, torture and death even as he witnessed old women and young children bury their dead and return to the daily struggle to survive with barely a whisper of complaint. There, he had come to understand that sometimes a man had to witness the blackest pits of the human condition in order to see just how beautiful humanity could be.

Once he left the army and moved back home, he had found himself learning the lesson all over again as he came to understand that it wasn't just in a war zone that the best and worst of humanity could be found. It was everywhere he looked, even in the heart of a city as large and urbanised as New York. It had been a search for this duality of the human soul that had made Winston draw a red circle around an odd little job advert in the back of the local newspaper and turn up on the doorstep of a converted firehouse in a bad part of town to apply for a job he didn't believe in. He hadn't realised it back then; it had taken years for the understanding to reach his conscious awareness. It was almost an epiphany revealed in the speech of an academic who, despite being plagued so badly with nightmares that he hadn't slept in three nights, nevertheless believed others were in greater need than himself.

In that moment, Winston realised that Ray Stantz was one of the most beautiful people he had ever met in his life.

"Promise me something, Ray," he said quietly. "Don't ever change."

Startled, the engineer looked up and saw in those near-black eyes a conviction so great it was almost spiritual. He flushed and looked back at his plate, speechless and not entirely sure how to respond or even what he had done to illicit such an emotion from the normally level-headed mechanic.

The moment was shattered by the sound of a door closing quietly and then Egon walked into the kitchen. He paused in the doorway and his eyebrows lifted. "Am I interrupting something?" he asked, sensing the odd mood.

Winston grinned. "Just me realising I have some of the best friends a guy could ask for," he gave the startled physicist an intent look. "Speaking of which, how are _you_?"

Egon considered that then glanced at the still embarrassed Ray. "I'm fine, Winston," he poured himself some coffee and joined them. "We need to discuss Humbaba," he changed the subject abruptly.

"Yeah, we were just about to do that," Ray agreed. He cleared his throat and visibly pulled himself back together before continuing. He paused again, however, as Peter stumbled into the kitchen. The three men stared at him but when he fell, rather than sat, into a chair, Egon shoved his untouched coffee under the psychologist's nose and rose to make himself a new drink. Obviously on automatic, Peter downed the coffee in one and then, finally, blinked. "Morning, Peter," Ray smiled.

"I'm so glad you didn't put 'good' in that greeting. I would have had to kill you," Peter rubbed his eyes and grabbed a pancake.

Winston glanced at Egon. "Better give Pete the entire pot," he said with a grin.

Egon nodded once, saved himself a mug and placed the rest in front of the psychologist before resuming his seat. "If you're awake, Peter, we need to discuss Humbaba."

"Okay," he yawned. "What happened in the garden? Where did the wind barrier come from? How can we get it down again? How do we kick Humbaba's butt when our throwers didn't affect him? How long have we got before Humbaba wakes up?" He paused. "Did I miss anything?"

"Not bad for someone who's sleepwalking."

Peter grimaced and Ray chuckled at his expression but it was Winston who spoke up first. "Guys, what happened in the garden?" He glanced at each of them in turn. "Where did those ghosts come from? Ray and I got a real good look in that garden when we were in the helicopter and we didn't see any ghosts. Why did they only show up when the barrier went down?"

"We might not have been able to see them," Ray became more serious as he pondered the question. "They had no reason to manifest until we entered the garden. If they were in a diffuse state when we flew over the place we wouldn't have seen them and Humbaba's spectral signature is so powerful it would have masked them from the P.K.E. meter as well..." he trailed off as he noticed Egon was shaking his head slowly. "You have another theory, Egon?"

"Mea culpa," the physicist's voice was sour. He glanced down at his coffee when his audience all turned the same startled stare on him and sighed. "Given the events that had taken place in the garden, I considered the probability of the six victims becoming ghosts. I speculated such an event might produce Class III focused repeaters, perhaps Class IV at worst. As noted by Ray, there was no way to verify my theory prior to actually witnessing the ghosts because of the degree of psychokinetic flux we were detecting..."

"So you didn't mention it at all until the barrier went down," Peter interrupted dryly. "Egon, you really need to start letting us in on your suspicions _before_ we run headlong into them..." he raised a hand to stall the objection forming on Egon's lips. "Spengs, there's an axe splitting a crack through my head the size of the Grand Canyon, give me a break and just hear me out, will ya?" When Egon obediently stilled, he smiled wanly and continued. "If it offends your scientific sensibilities _that_ much, make it clear you're just hypothesising. Scientists do that, right Egon? Throw out a few hypotheses and _then_ run off to test them? Think of Ghostbusting the same way if you have to but for Mother Mary's sake, stop springing these surprises on us at the last minute!"

A tiny smile fluttered across the physicist's lips before he could stop himself. "I didn't think I would ever live to see the day when Doctor Venkman would be lecturing _me_ on scientific methodology," his tone was somewhat rueful.

"Can you imagine the look on Dean Jaeger's face if he could see us now?" Ray grinned broadly then he sighed and patted Egon's arm. "Seriously, Egon, I should have considered that myself..."

"We _all_ should have considered that," Winston interrupted. "We've all been doing this gig long enough to know what happens when people die violent deaths. It could have occurred to any one of us but it didn't. It's not your fault they surprised us, Egon."

"And when you did try and tell us, I didn't even let you speak," Ray added. "I should be apologising to you, Egon. I thought badly of you and I should have known better."

Egon glanced between the pair of them and shook his head. "I think you misunderstand the point I am trying to make, gentlemen," he said wearily. "What I speculated we would encounter is exactly what we _appeared_ to encounter but we were unable to take readings to verify that the six ghosts we trapped truly were Class III or Class IV entities. Or even that they belonged to the six people who died in that garden. I completely neglected to consider the possibility that they were connected from the very beginning to Humbaba or the wind shield and in doing so exposed us all to unnecessary risk."

There was silence for a moment. "You mean they _weren't_ the people who died in the garden?" Peter demanded.

"I _knew_ there was something weird going on in there!" Winston muttered. "Those ghosts didn't make any sense to me!"

Egon studied Winston thoughtfully for a moment. They had all learned over the years, sometimes the hard way, to trust Winston's instincts. He was able understand patterns none of the rest of them could even recognise and they relied heavily on his ability to put clues together to bring into focus the various mysteries they often encountered during busts. "I think the deaths brought the entities into existence," he explained slowly as if feeling his way through his own theory. "I am uncertain as to whether the entities absorbed the victims' ghosts or whether the victims' ghosts themselves became the entities in question," his blue gaze refocused on his audience then he turned to regard Ray solemnly. "While Peter and Janine were in hospital, I spent my time analysing the behaviour of the ghosts in the Containment Unit and reading up on the information you had researched on Humbaba. Are you familiar with the galla-demons?"

"Sure," Ray replied immediately. "The seven demons who drag the dead and dying down into the underworld," he frowned. "Egon, I see what you're getting at but you can't possibly be right. The gallas work in groups of two or seven. Never six."

There was a disgruntled expression on Egon's face. "But you agree that is exactly what they appeared to be?"

"Well yes, now that you mention it," Ray pushed his plate away and leaned forward. "Do you think we've left one behind?"

"It's possible the seventh chose not to manifest and attack us when the other six did," Egon was starting to look frustrated. "But that makes no logical sense. It would be defying its own nature to stand back and not participate."

"You know what else doesn't make sense?" The engineer took control of the conversation. "Why would they attack us in the first place? We weren't dead or even dying. The gallas are only supposed to be interested in the dead and dying."

Winston sucked in a sharp breath as realisation dawned. Across the table, he saw the haunted shadow flare in Peter's eyes as the psychologist caught on as well. "Guys..."

"You're right, Ray," Egon mused, although there was an exasperated lilt to his tone now. "Fascinating. Could both of my theories be wrong?"

"Guys."

"I don't think so, Egon. I think there's more going on here than we realise." Ray smiled at the irritated physicist. "We'll find the answers, Egon. You're right, they couldn't have been the normal Class III or IV ghosts which means Humbaba was doing something else in that garden. I'm betting it's tied in to whatever plan Humbaba has for us. We know he hates humanity but he doesn't generally have any more control over death than we do. Maybe what he did was shape those ghosts into a simulacrum of the gallas? They were trying to protect him, after all. The gallas wouldn't have any reason to protect him." He paused and frowned, suddenly worried. "Would they?"

"GUYS!" Winston's voice rang out like a drill sergeant, silencing both scientists at once. He took a deep breath before continuing in a more normal tone of voice. "Guys, you're both missing something here. Those ghosts didn't attack us," he gazed at the pair intently.

Ray and Egon stared at him then glanced at each other. "Sure looked like it from where I was standing," Ray was indignant.

"Really?" Winston retorted. "From where I was standing it looked like the only folks in the garden they cared about were Peter and Janine. Even when we started firing, they ignored us in favour of attacking those two. Now why _is _that?"

Ray gasped and his brown eyes widened in shock. "Gosh, Egon, he's right!" he turned to stare at Peter, who was watching them all uneasily. The engineer didn't fail to notice how white the psychologist now looked. He looked back at Egon and Winston, his worry increasing. "What do you think it means? It doesn't make any sense. What's so special about Peter and Janine?"

"Gee, thanks Ray," Peter's protest was weak and half-hearted. He looked shaken.

"Here's the stinger," Winston added gravely. "We didn't even know Janine would be coming with us until the last minute. We had to fight Egon to let her come, remember? Whatever made those ghosts decide to home in on Peter and Janine had to be something they decided when they saw us. It couldn't have been planned if even we didn't know Janine would be coming until we were ready to go."

"Did they do anything that stood out when we were there?" Ray looked at them all.

"They were the first to enter the garden?" Winston suggested.

"No," Egon disagreed immediately. "The four of you entered the garden together."

"Maybe they were closest to the ghosts?" Ray tried.

Egon shook his head. "Peter certainly was but Janine was standing beside Winston. Ray was closer to the ghosts than Janine and they didn't pay any attention to him."

The three lapsed into silence as they considered this mystery but even Winston looked stumped. "You weren't doing anything we didn't notice, were you?" Ray asked Peter jokingly but frowned when he received no reply. "Peter?"

"Huh? What?" Peter blinked and refocused on them and it was then the three Ghostbusters realised that the psychologist hadn't been listening to a word they were saying. Even now, he seemed distracted, his eyes dark with an undefined emotion that disturbed them.

"You alright, Pete?" Winston asked him quietly.

Peter's gaze slid away from the group to scan the kitchen, almost as if he was unable to meet their gaze. "Yeah, fine," his tone failing to reassure any of them. "Where's Janine?"

There was a sudden silence. Peter's eyes finally focused on the others as he tried to analyse the reason for it. Winston glanced his way looking as puzzled as he felt, so he turned his attention to Ray and Egon. Egon was intently studying his coffee mug and Ray looked uneasy as if he wasn't sure what to say. "She got up early," the engineer said at last. "Went downstairs."

"So she's at her desk then?" Peter tried to pin down the reason for the obvious evasion. "Has she eaten breakfast? Maybe we should go get her," he started to rise to his feet and saw Ray glance in Egon's direction. He also saw Egon wince in response.

"She had an appointment with that plant doctor this morning," Egon said calmly without meeting his gaze.

Peter sat back down, eyeing the physicist suspiciously. "She went alone?"

Egon's jaw tightened slightly. "Peter, it's really not an unusual occurrence," he pointed out.

Peter didn't answer immediately; he was trying to understand Egon's tone of voice. It was familiar and, at the same time, unusual.

"We didn't want her to go alone, not after everything that's been happening recently and not after last night," Ray admitted when Egon lapsed into silence. "She thought we were being overprotective. I didn't know how far to push it but Egon..." he trailed off for a moment and glanced at the physicist. Egon returned the gaze with an expressionless stare. Ray frowned as he realised his recalcitrant friend had no intention of helping him out this time. If Egon had no intention of letting him know how much he should reveal, there was nothing stopping him from being honest. "They both got pretty steamed at each other. She said she expected this behaviour off her mother not her bosses and if we're going to force her to account for her every move, she's going to go back home and only come here during work hours."

Peter sighed as he finally recognised the self-recrimination that had been in Egon's voice. "So she stormed off and Egon's been sulking in his lab?" He ignored the glare the physicist shot him. "When's she due back?"

"She didn't say," Ray replied uneasily. "It doesn't really matter though, does it? She does have a point, Peter. Just because she's living here at the moment doesn't mean she answers to us outside of business hours."

Peter let his breath out in a hiss. He only had a gut feeling, nothing concrete, that her life was in danger. He didn't understand the sensation; all he could see was the look on her face as she tumbled into the abyss in his dreams. She had trusted him to save his life and he had betrayed her. But that had been a dream, it had nothing to do with reality. He knew he was letting it get to him when it shouldn't, affecting the way he was reacting to events taking place in reality, events that didn't have anything to do with his dream.

It was a hollow denial. It was hollow because while the others had been discussing the garden, he had realised something. As they speculated about the amount of ghosts in the garden, he had remembered the ghosts in his dream. He had remembered there were _seven_ ghosts in his dream.

He didn't know what that meant but something told him it was significant. The psychologist inside him, the one who had listened in the lectures devoted to dream symbolism and interpreting the subconscious mind, had sat up and paid attention to his friends' discussion from that moment on. And as they debated the significance of Peter and Janine being the only targets, he had considered the events of his dream with growing fear.

Now he felt trapped. He didn't know what to tell them because he wasn't sure he had anything to say. Part of him wanted to toss aside the dream and write it off as being exactly what it appeared to be - a nightmare, a jarring, unpleasant nightmare, but nothing more sinister than that. Another part, the part that had gotten him through two PhDs, was refusing to allow him to brush off his experience and he had to admit to himself that he was confused. He didn't know what to do next. All he knew was that it was a mistake for Janine to be away from the firehouse alone. He knew it completely and passionately and yet had no logical reason for believing it. He had no words to explain his feelings to the others and so he said nothing at all.

Aware of the irony of his decision in light of his lecture to Egon, he sighed and ran his hands through his thick mane of hair. "We don't know how long Humbaba's reach is," he pointed out. "Remember Gozer? Gozer hadn't even arrived in our world but that didn't stop Dana and Louis being possessed and acting out his will."

"This is not the same," Egon responded, automatically categorising the facts but nevertheless unable to hide his unease. "Dana and Louis were possessed because of where they lived not because of who they were. Humbaba has no structures designed to facilitate his return to our world and no minions to help him arrive. He has to do the work himself."

"You sure about that, Egon?" Peter pressed. "Think about it. You and Ray just speculated there might be seven ghosts... gallas... whatever you called them. What if you're right? What if the other six attacked to give the seventh time to escape? What if we're being spied on or stalked?" he knew he was laying it on thick but that sense of some impending doom hovering just out of reach refused to leave him. Besides, he could see he had their attention now. "We were all in the garden, the ghost could know our faces, or read our auras or however it is that ghosts track living people down. Come on, Winston, it's alone against superior numbers. What's it gonna do?"

Winston sighed, his shoulders slumping. "It'll strike when we're at our weakest - when we're alone and can't summon help."

Egon readjusted his glasses restlessly. "This is all speculation, Peter."

"Yes, it is. I don't have a shred of proof to back any of this up, just a feeling I can't explain," Peter's voice was flat as he leaned forward. "Let me lay it on the table for you, Spengs. What went on at the pier between you, Janine and the lotsabuck?"

The physicist started visibly and his eyes widened. The question had come out of the blue and caught him completely off guard. Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw Ray and Winston shift uneasily but he held firm, gaze unwaveringly fixed on Egon. This was it, he had realised. The only way to address the situation at hand was to confront the situation they had all been avoiding. Peter knew none of them had come to terms with the situation yet. It wasn't just Janine who had been left wrestling with inner demons; all the Ghostbusters were struggling with their guilt at not having realised sooner that something was horribly wrong with their secretary. However, no-one felt comfortable actually raising the subject and so it had been skirted around, coyly brushed past, as if they felt they had no right to be the person who mentioned it. An unspoken pact had therefore been forged between Ray, Peter and Winston; to hold their peace until either Janine or Egon broke the silence first.

Until now.

"I'm not certain I see the relevance," Egon said slowly, stiffly.

Peter sighed in exasperation. "No, I don't suppose you do, Egon." His eyes narrowed in irritation. "When we turned up, that lotsabuck was about to kill you. You didn't have your pack on; you weren't trying to protect yourself. From our point of view, it looked like you were _trying_ to get yourself killed and if we'd arrived just a few seconds later, you know as well as I do that this conversation now wouldn't be happening. Let me take a wild guess here. You pulled an emotional and utterly crazy stunt because you believed it would work. No logic, just a gut feeling. Am I right?"

Egon's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Yes," he agreed cautiously.

"Then it's fair to say that you were willing to place more importance on Janine's safety than on finding a more logical solution? That you considered Janine's life more important than your own?"

Egon stared at him in silence for several moments as if he was calculating whether honesty now would cost him more than he was willing to pay later. "Yes," he admitted at last, his tone neutral. He knew exactly what else he had just confessed to but refused to acknowledge the smiles that appeared on Ray and Winston's faces. Peter did not smile. He wasn't in the mood, the nightmares had seen to that.

"So it's equally fair to say that you'd be more willing to take a chance on us being unnecessarily overprotective now, resulting in an angry - but alive - Janine later, than in us letting her carry on as normal which ends with us laying wreaths on her coffin?"

"When you put it that way..." Egon gave in, his voice sour.

"Sorry, Egon." Peter's tone was genuinely sympathetic. "But sometimes the only way to get you to listen is to use a sledgehammer."

"Criticism noted, _Doctor _Venkman." The physicist didn't look appeased. "What do you suggest?"

Peter sighed. "Unfortunately, sometimes Janine needs to be hit over the head with a sledgehammer too, so I vote we pile into Ecto-1 and drag her back here by force."

"She is _not_ gonna like that," Ray grinned.

"I'll use the damn Crimebuster traps if I have to," Peter retorted. "But one way or the other, she's coming back to this firehouse."

Egon studied his face thoughtfully then frowned. "You really _do_ believe Janine's in trouble, don't you?" His expression and tone of voice suggested it was only just occurring to him that Peter's fears were genuine and that he had not been looking for future blackmail material after all.

Peter sighed again. "I believe Winston's right, Egon. I think something happened to both Janine and myself in that garden. I don't understand it but I definitely _do_ know I don't like it. It's not just Janine I don't want wandering around the city alone, I want all of us to be careful."

Winston nodded. "I still think those ghosts were a distraction to stop us dealing with Humbaba. We can't put off dealing with him any longer, guys. We need a plan."

"I have an idea," Egon said slowly.

"Egon, you kidder, you had one all along, didn't you?" For this first time since entering the kitchen that morning, the old Peter Venkman seemed to be waking up.

Egon frowned at him. By contrast, the physicist's mood had soured dramatically at the mention of the recent lotsabuck threat and was showing signs of deteriorating further. "You won't like it," he said.

"Egon, I never like your plans," the psychologist pointed out. "What is it?"

Egon shook his head and rose, his breakfast untouched. "First we find Janine."

Peter grinned at the physicist's urgency. It was proof that the lotsabuck subject had done its intended job but he had to ignore a tiny clinical voice at the back of his mind that observed the subject still needed a proper discussion. For now, however, there just wasn't time so he squashed that little voice ruthlessly. "And then we discuss the plan?"

"No," the physicist spotted the grin, understood exactly why it had appeared and frowned irritably. "When we have found Janine, we proceed to the Mayor's office. I want his input during the discussion of my idea."

"The Mayor?" Winston looked startled. "What on earth _is_ this plan, Egon?"

"One the Mayor won't like either, Winston," Egon admitted and strode out of the room leaving three worried Ghostbusters in his wake.

Ray felt a small light-bulb go off in the back of his mind. There _was_ a solution. In fact, he could think of two. Convinced he knew exactly what Egon had in mind, he hurried out of the kitchen before the others could ask him what he thought the physicist was up to.

Egon was right, they weren't going to like this plan at all.


	12. Speak Then Unto Me

**Chapter 11: _Speak Then Unto Me_**

_"If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me. " -- William Shakespeare._

The traffic was already crawling when Janine left the firehouse. Not in the mood to deal with it, she decided to take the subway instead but matters were made worse when she realised the address she had been given was not an easy location to find.

By the time she arrived at her destination, her temper was gathered around her body like a thunderstorm waiting to explode.

The building she found herself in seemed to be little more than a gigantic greenhouse. She followed a winding mulch path lined with flowering plants through an indoor garden dominated by great trees and spreading bushes. She couldn't see any sign of other people around but visibility was as poor as if walking through a real forest. Despite herself, she felt her black mood ebb into a grey fog of irritation and by the time the path brought her to a halt outside what appeared to be a log cabin, she was feeling almost human again.

A little mystified by the design and layout, Janine looked around. She could see at once that she had a choice - enter the building or return to the depths of the artificial forest and the sign above the door suggested that entering the building was exactly the thing she wanted to do. With a shrug, she tried the door. It opened easily into a giant well-lit room. Paintings and photographs of vegetation lined the walls and potted plants covered all available floor space - trees in the corners, spider-plants spilling down over the windowsills; hanging baskets tumbling from the ceiling and amongst all this were benches for people to sit and wait. At the far end of the room, another door indicated a continuation of the building beyond.

She wasn't the only one in the area, she noticed immediately. Near the far door, three men were sat around a large potted tree, huddled into an intense discussion. Finding a seat near them but far enough away to ensure privacy, she sat down and took a moment to regroup her thoughts.

She suspected that part of her short temper came from the fact she hadn't been sleeping well since the confrontation at the botanical centre and she had to admit she was still irritated by the idea that Peter had given serious thought to dragging her from her own home in chains. She had kept her promise and confronted him immediately about that. The psychologist had tried to deny it at first but she had refused to back down and when he finally turned a betrayed, protesting gaze on Egon and Winston it had been obvious that the physicist had spoken the truth.

Her stay at the firehouse had deteriorated from there.

She had thought things couldn't possibly get any worse than being awoken from a humiliating and utterly public nightmare by Doctor Venkman but being psyched out by all four Ghostbusters afterwards had dragged her to her lowest state since leaving hospital. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a tiny voice told her that it just showed they cared but there was currently a far stronger voice complaining that they had all ganged up on her _yet again_ and she had come away from it somehow demeaned.

Had she really expected things around the firehouse to change after the guys vanquished the lotsabuck? She realised that she had. The removal of that foul spirit had left the past few years a confusing, hazy blur of emotion, reaction and twisted perception. She wasn't entirely sure what had really happened and what had just been a veil slipped over her eyes to manipulate her even further into the creature's snare and as a result she wasn't completely certain how to view her relationship with the four men who had saved her soul. She couldn't even fathom out how she was supposed to treat the Ghostbusters' mousy accountant, Louis Tully: she just didn't know how much of the past three years had genuinely been affected by herself and how much had been the lotsabuck talking.

When she had first realised she was free, she had expected things to return to normal but she had slowly come to the realisation that it had been so long, she wasn't sure what normal was anymore. She felt alone and adrift and it was a sensation that frightened her. She knew she needed to speak to someone about it but she wasn't able to envisage how she could possibly benefit from the usual methods of counselling.

_"Excuse me, Mr. Shrink. My name's Janine Melnitz and I've spent the past three years enslaved to an evil fairy godmother who used my insecurities over relationships to radically change my physical appearance in the hopes of stealing my soul. Now I have what I always wanted, I'm still not happy. Can you help?" Great, Melnitz. That'll go down real well. Arkham Asylum will just love you._

Of course, there was one person she could think of who would believe her story but the idea of pouring out her troubles to Doctor Venkman definitely wasn't an appealing one and it occurred to her that anything she did say to him would affect not just her relationship with the psychologist but his relationship with Egon as well. She wasn't even certain she had the right to interfere with that and it was yet another reason for her to maintain her silence.

Anyway, most of the time she was just fine. It was only when she got into one of these stupid, ridiculous arguments with one of the guys that she would find herself wondering if the spectre of the lotsabuck would ever truly disappear from her life. Until she had been freed of its unholy influence, she had thought it would be a simple matter of returning to who she had been before the creature had entered her life. But so much time had passed and the world had moved on. She was beginning to understand there was nothing to go back to. Stripped of her past, she felt she had nothing solid on which to build her future and she reluctantly confronted the unpleasant knowledge that freedom had brought a new set of chains she was equally unable to escape and this time, she didn't think this was a prison the guys could rescue her from.

She sighed bitterly and considered the possibility of trying to avoid taking it out on them every time they tried to help her. Unfortunately, they didn't know their every well-meaning gesture just seemed to emphasise how imprisoned and helpless she now felt.

"Janine sad."

Startled out of her reverie, her head snapped up in shock, coming face to face with a pair of luminescent amber eyes set into the ugliest, greasiest face she had ever had the misfortune to meet.

"Slimer?" she said incredulously. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"Ray mad. Egon mad. Janine sad. Slimer stay with Janine."

Janine blinked then her eyes narrowed dangerously. Great. As if her day couldn't get any worse, she was now babysitting the Spud.

"Let me guess," she sighed. "You followed me all the way from the firehouse?"

Slimer nodded warily.

She growled to herself and felt her fingers flex into fists. Mentally reciting a mantra to remind her it wasn't the Spud's fault she was in such a bad mood, she concentrated on breathing. If she could avoid making a scene with Slimer, maybe those yoga classes would pay off after all.

As if oblivious to her inner struggle, Slimer continued to stare at her with wide anxious eyes. "Nasty air. Slimer stay with Janine."

"I'm not in the mood, Slimer," she flared. "Why don't you go pester Peter or Winston?"

"Slimer love Janine."

"Won't work, Spud!" she snarled.

"Pleeeeeease?" the little ghost clasped his hands in front of him almost angelically, the large eyes growing even bigger as he pulled his own unique version of the lost puppy look.

Janine deflated. She didn't really have the energy to fight with the innocent ghost. "Alright," she snapped. "But no hugging! You slime me and I'll neutronise ya myself, got it?"

"Yeah!" Slimer sank down onto the bench next to her in an attempt to copy her seating behaviour and succeeded in looking like an over-cooked Jell-O mould. A tiny giggle escaped her at the sight then she scowled, sternly reminding herself that she was officially still in a bad mood.

"Okay, Alec. If that's not a ghost, what is it?"

Janine transferred her gaze from her unexpected companion to the other three occupants of the room. All three of them were staring in her direction, specifically at Slimer and now she could see their faces, she realised one of them was familiar.

The one who had spoken was dressed untidily in jeans and a sloppy sweater. His dark hair fell in a shaggy mass around his shoulders. His eyes were wide as he studied the ghost but there was no fear in the gaze. He was enraptured. Janine had only ever seen that expression on the face of one other person when confronted by something supernatural and unexplained and she found herself wondering if this person was as excitable as Ray.

Next to him was a very old man. He looked to be of Middle Eastern descent but his hair was white and the skin clinging to the thin bones looked frail, as if ready to crumble into fine dust at any moment.

Janine didn't recognise either of those two men but she did recognise Alec as the man who had given the Charles Austin Memorial lecture. She searched through her mind for his full name and after a moment, remembered.

"Doctor Newman, isn't it?" she asked.

The disgruntled scientist glared at her for a moment and she felt a small sliver of sympathy at his expression. Apparently she wasn't the only one having a bad day. She watched his irritation die away, replaced by confusion. His gaze slid over her appearance then came to rest on the dying tree she had set at her feet. "Ah, the lady with the _Laurelia_ problem," he smiled ruefully at her. "I see you managed to find the place."

Janine smiled. "Eventually. It wasn't what I expected." Her gaze slid over his two companions curiously. The original speaker started slightly and gave her an intent stare. Then he turned to look at Slimer.

"Hey!" he said suddenly. "I know who you are!"

"Huh?" She stared at him. She was fairly certain she had never seen him before in her life.

"Yeah, sure. Red hair, Brooklyn accent. Ugly green pet ghost... you're the Ghostbusters' secretary, aren't you?" He sounded painfully enthusiastic. "I've seen both the films. You were played by Annie Potts, weren't you?"

"Make my day, will ya?" She muttered under her breath, just waiting for the question they always asked. _Go on, I dare ya. Ask me. I'm in the right mood for it. Ask me if I ever dated that rat of an accountant and I swear I'll plaster your nose all over that wall behind ya! Go on, punk, make my day!_

He didn't ask, however. Seeing the look on her face, he grinned sympathetically. "They weren't too accurate, I take it?"

She grimaced in distaste. "Don't get me started."

"Tim," Alec warned as his colleague opened his mouth.

Tim looked at him innocently. "What?"

Alec sighed and threw Janine an apologetic look. "This is Doctor Tim Richardson. Also known as a pain in the butt."

She tried to hide a smile behind her hand at the look on the other man's face. She could guess exactly what kind of individual Tim was and she was relieved that Alec had stepped in to take control of the conversation.

"And Nasim Jabbaar, Doctor Austin's head gardener," he gave her an amused look. "And I've made a point never to watch the films, so I have no idea what your name is, Miss..."

"Janine Melnitz."

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Melnitz," he glanced at her tree again. "So you have an interest in botany?"

She shrugged. "I like plants but I'm no scientist," she glanced at their tree. "I know that's a yucca though."

Alec studied her thoughtfully. "What species?"

"Alec..." Tim began but Alec quickly hushed him into silence.

Janine blinked at the exchange and glanced at Slimer. The little ghost was watching the unfolding conversation with intense curiosity but he didn't seen unnerved by anything. She rose and approached the tree, crouching down to study it. Alec and Nasim slid away from it so she could look more closely and watched curiously. At last, she shrugged and looked up. "Soaptree. From the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts. Can reach 18 feet but doesn't usually get past 10 and needs dry, sandy soil. The Navajo used its roots and trunk for making soap, that's how it got its name." She quirked a grin at their startled faces. "Desert plants are my favourites."

"You're good," Tim stared. "It's _hard_ to tell the difference between yucca species. Especially when they're this young." He glanced at Alec, who also looked impressed. "How come the Ghostbusters needed to ask us about cedars when they've got you?"

She smiled. "The only time it came up, the guys trashed my apartment trying to kill a spirit that was haunting my geranium. Since they gave it to me in the first place, I guess they're still embarrassed about it."

Alec and Tim exchanged a look. "This is the geranium that featured in Professor Phil Dendron's recent book, _Geraniums I Have Known_?" Tim asked curiously. "The one that almost ate Brooklyn four years ago?"

Her grin broadened. "Yeah, that's the one. The Professor sent us all free copies of that book for saving his life. I don't think Doctor V. was too impressed though. Between you and me, he doesn't like plants very much."

Tim smiled. "I didn't even believe that happened until we spoke with the Ghostbusters the other day. How did you ever end up with a haunted geranium?"

"They were busting a ghost in a garden centre and they were given the geranium as a gift. Doctor V. palmed it off onto Egon but when it comes to plants, the only thing Egon's good at is killing them, so he gave it to me. They thought they'd trapped the ghost but it was hiding in the geranium all along and everything I did that was good for a geranium turned out to be good for the ghost too."

"So how did you stop it?"

She grinned. "Egon over-watered it until it died."

The two botanists laughed. "The simplest solutions are often the best," Alec smiled wryly. "But I don't think over-watering these cedars is going to work."

The secretary winced as she was brought back into the present with an ungraceful thump. She had been doing a good job of ignoring the past few days until that comment. "I don't know much about cedars. They're very rare now, aren't they?" she asked.

Tim nodded at once. "Oh yeah, especially the Lebanese cedar. You know they're almost indestructible? They live for hundreds of years, the oldest cedar in the world is over a thousand years old but there's not many left now. They're mountain trees, need deep soil, plenty of sunlight and lots of rain. They also grow best near the sea. It takes 25 years for them to start flowering and they have male and female flowers on the same tree which makes it very handy for us botanists who are trying to build up a seed bank, I can tell you!"

"Seed bank?"

"Yeah, it's where we take seeds from plant species and store them. If the species becomes endangered or extinct, we've still got seeds we can use to try and repopulate the species."

"Kinda like plant zoos then?"

Tim laughed then quickly bit back his outburst. "Um... Not really."

"Why is it so rare now?"

"Same old story," Alec said. "It was a very commercial timber. Humans cut most of the forests down for shipping, housing, firewood, anything you can think of. I guess we're lucky it's not extinct. It's been logged for at least 5,000 years."

"Do you know there was a prophecy five thousand years ago?" The voice that spoke wasn't one that Janine had heard before. She turned and found a small elderly man standing in the nearby doorway. He was Middle Eastern and, although probably not as old, reminded her of the silent gardener sat next to the two botanists. He continued, dark eyes fixed on Janine. "When the cedar forests spread from the sea to the slopes of Mount Lebanon, the King of the Gods, Enlil, Lord of Air, foresaw a day when humans would come to the forest to steal the wood. On that day, he said, the trees would fall, the forests would be no more and it would be many centuries before humans would understand the mistake they had made. By then, it would be too late. So he created a demon to protect the forest from the humans. But one day, a warrior-king came to kill the demon and the forests were cut down. Enlil's prophecy came to pass and now the earth cries in the ashes of her once fertile soils."

Janine eyed him narrowly. "You're talking about Humbaba," she accused him. The little old man looked startled and she smiled triumphantly. "The Ghostbusters already know what they're up against. They know Humbaba's in the garden."

The stranger studied Janine for a few moments then the harsh lines of his face softened and a slight twinkle appeared in his gaze. "Not bad," he agreed. "My name's Musa Jabbaar. I believe you have a pukatea for me to look at?"

She rose. "Jabbaar?"

The plant doctor glanced in Nasim's direction then grinned. "Yes, we are brothers. To his eternal frustration." He smirked at his brother who scowled furiously at him then turned back to Janine with an expectant expression on his face.

The secretary obligingly rose and took him over to the sick tree. She noticed that Musa barely acknowledged Slimer as the little ghost floated upwards into the air, staring at the stranger with huge eyes. _Maybe he's seen the films too_, she thought to herself and rolled her eyes. At least Tim had dropped that subject.

Musa crouched down, surprisingly flexible despite his advancing years, and looked closely at the young tree. "Hm," he mused softly at last. "Good soil, not too much water, roomy pot. You've looked after it well but it's still sick. Very interesting," he rose back to his feet and looked at Janine. "Do you mind if I hang on to this for a few days? I'll need to study it more closely to be certain."

"Certain of what?" She asked suspiciously.

"It's infected. But I need to know what with and that will take research." Musa smiled easily.

Janine sighed and gave in. "Sure, if you can cure it. It was a present off my sister and her boyfriend."

He tilted her head, looking intently into her face and she found herself fascinated by the colour of his eyes. They weren't black although they were certainly very dark. They weren't even a truly solid brown either. There was a murky darkness to that gaze that made it hard to tell what colour they really were, almost like trying to decide what colour the ocean was at night. There were the same fathomless depths as well; the same sense of drowning as she gazed into them and suddenly she realised his eyes were shining like stars.

Startled, she jumped back and blinked rapidly but when she refocused on him, all she saw was a slightly puzzled plant doctor gazing at her with eyes that twinkled brightly with good humour. "You had a birthday recently?"

"What? Um... sure. Last month. But this wasn't a birthday present. Why?"

"Fascinating creatures, scorpions," a distant look appeared in the botanist's dark eyes. "Tiny creatures, with a dangerous sting. They have a powerful homing instinct, you know. You can send one to a distant place, making it utterly lost and while it may take time and many dangers, the scorpion will eventually find its way back home. But the most fascinating thing of all about them can only be seen when there's no light to see by - then it somehow finds a way to make its own. Amazing creatures but it's not until you plunge one into absolute darkness that you - and maybe _they_ - realise just how powerful they really are," he gave her a gentle smile. "Never underestimate a Scorpio, eh?" He patted her on the shoulder while she stared speechlessly at him, unsure what to say. "You let your boyfriend take you home and come back in a few days. I should have news for you then."

"Huh?" When she finally found her voice, the weird little man had already picked up her plant and disappeared back into the depths of the building from whence he had come. She turned a bemused gaze on the other humans in the room. Judging by the sympathetic grins on the two botanists' faces, they must have been on the receiving end of conversations like this regularly. There was a dark scowl on Nasim's face. Maybe even brothers weren't immune, she thought.

"As long as I've known him," Tim grinned at her, sensing her unspoken question.

The secretary gestured irritably. "Never had a moment's peace since taking this job. Don't even know why I get surprised anymore." Her gaze turned to Slimer who was staring in the direction the plant doctor had gone in. "Come on, Slimer, let's get you back to the firehouse."

She braced herself for a protesting wail but the ghost turned and charged right through the wall into the garden beyond as if he couldn't wait to leave. She blinked. "Okay, then..." she sighed and glanced at the three men.

"Nice meeting you again, Miss Melnitz." Alec said with a strange smile. He was staring at the slime that was dripping off the wall, the only sign that Slimer had ever been in the room.

"If you ever want to discuss plants, feel free to call me!" Tim offered her a business card. "I'm always willing to meet fellow plant-lovers."

Alec seemed to recover his senses. "Don't," he advised Janine ruefully. "Not unless you want him to talk you to death."

"You obviously don't know Egon and Ray too well," she retorted in amusement, accepting the card off Tim. "If I can put up with physics and engineering, I can put up with something I actually understand."

Tim grinned smugly at Alec then winked at her. "Let me know how the pukatea does," he told her. "They're even rarer than the cedars now."

"You bet," she agreed and hurried out of the cabin.

As she turned to head down the path, she became aware of Slimer babbling incoherently and excitedly up ahead. Recognising the tone, she picked up her pace. Slimer had just suffered a fright and was trying to explain it to whatever poor soul he had cornered.

Rounding the corner, she pulled up short, startled by the sight of the little ghost gesticulating wildly in front of an obviously confused Egon. Her surprise evaporated quickly and was replaced by irritation and suspicion at the sight of him.

"What are you doing here?" The secretary snapped.

Egon turned to regard her, apparently unperturbed by her tone of voice although he did give her an intent stare. It only made her more annoyed.

"Spying on me? I told you already, Egon. I don't need..."

"I have an excellent memory, Janine." His tone frosted slightly. "I'm not here alone, the guys are with Ecto-1 in the parking lot. We're going to City Hall to meet with the Mayor and intend taking you with us."

Janine hesitated. She had been expecting a continuation of their earlier debate not a request to go and meet the Mayor. Then her eyes narrowed again. "You've never needed me there before, Egon. Why now? I'm just the secretary."

The physicist sighed and glanced away, staring into the undergrowth to the side of them. He looked tired, although whether that had anything to do with Janine's current hostility she couldn't actually tell. "I think I know how to stop Humbaba," he explained quietly after a moment. "But the plan will need the Mayor's approval." He hesitated and then turned back to her. "I haven't actually explained what I intend to the guys yet either."

Janine stared back at him in surprise, feeling some of her anger die. Although Egon could be infamously secretive about his ideas and theories, he usually let the other Ghostbusters in on his plants before attempting to carry them out or make them official. She couldn't think of any reason why he would choose to do things this way unless he was under some kind of pressure. "Egon? That's bad, isn't it?" she asked uncertainly.

He nodded solemnly. "Very bad."

She sighed and felt the last of her irritation drain away. Egon wasn't trying to be overprotective anymore, she realised. Whatever his plan for stopping Humbaba was, it wasn't going to be popular and he knew it. In his own unique fashion, he was asking her for moral support. "Alright Egon," she agreed then glared at him. "But in return you're going to talk Doctor V. into giving me overtime. Kicking Mayoral butt on the Ghostbusters behalf isn't in my job description!"

A twinkle suddenly appeared in Egon's gaze, a mixture of amusement and obvious relief. "Very well," he conceded. "That's the least I can do. But we had better leave now. We don't have much time."

Time, she realised then. It was time they were running out of and time that was putting Egon under pressure. She nodded at once and fell into step with him. Slimer dived down to her side, muttering to himself, causing them both to give him a curious stare.

"Janine, did anything unusual happen while you were inside that building?" Egon asked cautiously. He paused as she glared at him and frowned. "Janine, please don't become defensive every time I ask a question of this nature. Not everything revolves around my concern for your safety."

She clenched her fists so tightly for a moment that she could feel her nails digging painfully into the skin. The shock of the sensation was enough to bring her back to reality and slowly, she willed her fingers to relax. "Does that mean you do or don't care?" She had been trying to lighten the mood but from the look of shock she saw lancing through his blue eyes, she realised her tone sounded bitter rather than coy. "Sorry, Egon. I was trying to be funny. That didn't come out the way it was supposed to."

He was silent for a moment, studying her then he nodded once. "It's alright," he replied at last and continued back towards the waiting car.

She hesitated a moment, watching him as he walked off. His tone had sounded reassuring but his expression was completely neutral. She couldn't tell if it really was alright or not and it bothered her. Silently kicking herself for her sharp tongue, she quickly hurried after him. Obviously Peter wasn't the person she would need to discuss her problems with. Except, she realised, it would have to be later, after they had dealt with Humbaba. With a frustrated sigh, she picked up her pace and wondered if there would ever be a time for just her and Egon.


	13. The Space of Seven Breaths

**Chapter 12: _The Space of Seven Breaths_**

_"When your mind is going hither and thither, discrimination will never be brought to a conclusion. With an intense, fresh and underlying spirit, one will make his judgments within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break right through to the other side." -- Hagakure, 'The Book of the Samurai.'_

The Ghostbusters were silent as they entered the city hall. They didn't speak as they rode the elevators up to the floors the Mayor had his offices on. They didn't even say anything as they sat down in the office to wait for Lenny to arrive.

Janine studied them intently as the minutes ticked by at an excruciatingly slow speed. Egon sat alone in a chair, his back ramrod straight, arms folded easily across his chest. His long, thin fingers, tapping against his biceps, unconsciously maintained a rhythm with Winston's muffled footsteps as the tall mechanic paced the room with restless strides. Ray had found a magazine on local economics and was idly flicking through the glossy pages without pausing to read the articles properly, whereas Peter had moved across to the window and was absently poking at the blinds that obscured the glass. The secretary couldn't remember a time when she'd seen the four of them quite so tense over a meeting.

They could hear the Mayor approaching long before they saw him. He was shouting at someone, his voice muffled and indistinct. The group paused and studied each other.

"Some things never change," Winston sighed.

A moment later, the door slammed inwards and the small, stocky Mayor burst into the room. His face was flushed and his eyes dark, pools of rage as he was followed inside by two harried-looking men.

On seeing the Ghostbusters in his office, he came to a dead stop. In silence, his gaze raked over each of them before finally resting on Peter. "And I thought my day couldn't get any worse. You've got 5 minutes, Ghostbusters," he stalked over to his desk then his head snapped up to glare at Peter. "And don't you dare tell me the world is in danger, or New York City is about to be destroyed, because I've had it up to here with doomsaying cults and Biblical melodrama!" He gesticulated wildly then sagged into his seat.

Winston and Ray exchanged an uneasy glance as Egon rose to join Peter, who had turned away from the window and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. A predatory smile stole slowly over the psychologist's face and he stalked across to the desk as if the Mayor was prey at his mercy. Egon grabbed his arm and shook his head warningly then turned to the irate city official himself. "That is exactly why we are here," he confirmed bluntly.

Lenny shot him a dark look but there was no surprise in his features. He had too much history with the paranormal experts to be anything other than frustrated and nervous whenever they arrived on his doorstep. "Start talking," he snapped.

Ray came forward cautiously. "Well, sir, what we have is a focused metaspectral manifestation ..."

"Ancient Babylonian god," Winston clarified quickly.

"... with probable apotheosising free-roaming properties ..."

"It'll go where it damn well wants to."

"The emergent influences displayed indicate an obligatory vegetative consociation ..."

"He's a regular plant boy."

"... as indicated by his current frondescent configuration ..."

"Looks like a tree."

"His materialisation is the cumulation of thousands of years of cosmically significant artificial entropic manipulation ..."

"He's in Brooklyn because of an ancient curse."

"... engineered for the sole purpose of eradicating its single nemesis."

"He plans on wiping out the entire human race."

Ray sucked in a deep breath, his first since opening his mouth, and fell silent, looking anxiously at the Mayor. Lenny's eyes, which had darted between the excitable scientist and his more grounded interpreter, finally settled on Winston. "Thank you," he muttered, his tone ascerbic.

"No problem," the mechanic replied, with a disbelieving glare at Ray that was utterly lost on the engineer.

Lenny studied them all suspiciously. "So what do you plan on doing about it?"

There was an uneasy silence as four pairs of eyes turned, almost simultaneously, towards Egon. Lenny raised both eyebrows slowly and also looked in his direction. "Well?" He demanded impatiently.

"Our equipment doesn't pack the juice we need ..." It was Peter who suddenly spoke up, cutting off Egon as the physicist opened his mouth.

Lenny stared at him. "You're saying you can't stop it? What's going to happen to my city if you can't stop it?"

"It'll be destroyed. As will every other city on Earth." Peter's tone was surprisingly off-hand.

Rising slowly from his seat, Lenny leaned heavily on his desk. "That's not good enough!" he snapped. "You're the Ghostbusters. If you don't stop this thing, nobody will. No one else does what ... whatever it is you people do!"

Egon started to speak but was again cut off by Peter. "Sure, our equipment is cutting edge, state of the art. Ray and Egon are the greatest brainiacs you'll ever meet, and Winston here ..." he flung an arm charitably around the thoroughly bemused mechanic, ignoring the looks his colleagues were all giving him. "Is a tactical genius, courtesy of a good ol' US of A army education. But!" He paused dramatically, releasing Winston at the same time. "We don't have anything that can stop him right now. If you want us to beat this man-eating, soul-sucking, world-destroying demon we're gonna to have to get serious."

"_How_ serious?" The suspicion was almost dripping off Lenny's every word.

Peter threw him a brilliant smile and gestured to Egon. "Mic's yours, Spengs. Take it away." He backed off, letting the irritable Mayor's attention focus on the physicist. He still didn't know what Egon had in mind but he was certain he was going to hate it. He was certain because Egon himself had expressed doubts as to whether they could convince Lenny to go along with the plan. And Ray hadn't even speculated once on what Egon's theory might have been. Normally a man who thoroughly enjoyed trying to pre-empt and outthink Egon, Ray's silence was so unusual that Peter knew with complete confidence that the engineer had guessed what Egon's plan would be and was as concerned about it as Egon himself was. And if those two were both worried and both still going through with trying to get it approved it was entirely possible that they would need every bit of verbal repartee an ex-psychology professor and son of a con man could provide them with. At the very least, he could impress on Lenny just how dire their situation was.

Egon glanced once at Janine who threw him an encouraging smile. He cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses nervously then fixed Lenny with a cool, blue stare. "Paranormal activity has increased dramatically within the past two days," he began. "The awakening of entities that are Class Seven and greater creates a specific psychokinetic flux cycle that affects the activity of local ecto-sensitive entities ..."

"What the hell is he saying?" Lenny interrupted, turning immediately to Winston.

"Demons as powerful as Gozer or Proteus," the mechanic explained. "Ghosts get more active before demons like that arrive. It's like a dog barking before an earthquake."

Lenny blinked. "Does that really happen?"

"Yes." Egon sounded a little reproachful at the interruption as he continued. "However, we have not experienced the cycle this time," he paused significantly and raised an eyebrow.

There was silence for a moment as everyone tried to figure out what Egon found so significant about that revelation. Lenny glanced at Winston again for help, but this time the mechanic shrugged helplessly. Then Ray snapped his fingers, dawning realisation on his face. "Until two days ago!" He exclaimed. "While you were in hospital, Peter, our phone was ringing off the hook. We haven't been able to take the calls yet because we needed to regroup. Most of our clients have been really understanding about that." He made a face. "Probably because what happened to you and Janine was plastered all over the news," he took a deep breath. "Anyway. We explained to them that we'd take down their information and get to them as soon as possible but the chances are the phenomenon is linked to Humbaba and like the other times, can be resolved if we take out the big guy."

"Whoa ... Humbaba?" Lenny interrupted again.

"That's the demon's name," Peter told him. "Mean guy. Likes plants, hates us for cutting down trees. Think Poison Ivy - but without the sex appeal."

Lenny stared at him for a moment as if he was trying to decide whether to strangle him into silence or let him keep talking, then turned back to Ray. "So? What happened two days ago?"

"The wind shield!" Winston finally understood what the two scientists were driving at. "We shut down the wind shield!" He caught the irritation flaring in Lenny's eyes and quickly elaborated. "The demon's protecting himself with some kind of manifested storm that's stopping anyone getting close."

"I see," the Mayor managed.

"Wait a sec, you mean that thing isn't just protecting Humbaba from us but is protecting the city from Humbaba?" Peter demanded, catching on at last.

"It's not like Humbaba really needs it." Winston muttered. "The combined force of four proton packs didn't affect it."

"Actually, the proton packs _did_ affect it." Egon corrected. "I've checked the calculations Ray's been making over the past two days and in a way we've made things worse. The principles of protonic energy transfer that we rely on to contain ghosts have become our Achilles heel. Humbaba utilised an endothermic conversion process to create a Class A exothermic reaction."

Ray nodded in agreement. "Our proton packs acted like an oxidator, combining with radicals provided by Humbaba to begin an ectoplasmic pyrolytic cycle."

"Precisely," Egon agreed. "Which explains why his spectrographic signature changed so radically after he restored the manifested atmospheric phenomenon."

"But not _how_ he erected the wind shield in the first place. I should have listened to you from the start, Egon. You were right all along."

"Yes." Egon said dryly.

Ray smiled at Egon's affronted expression. "We're not all geniuses, Egon. You've got to give us time to catch up. And you didn't actually have any evidence until now. You _are_ the one who's always telling me not to accept a theory before evidence has been collected."

Egon relaxed at that. "I'm sorry, Ray. You are, of course, correct."

The engineer smiled but was prevented from answering that as the Mayor finally exploded. "Why the hell can't you people ever give it to me straight? Am I going to have to ban you from this office or make it law that you only speak English when you step through that damn door? What the hell is wrong with you people!"

Peter smiled brightly at him. "I keep telling them the exact same thing, Lenny."

The Mayor glared at him. He hated hearing his name coming from the psychologist's lips. Peter knew that. It was one of the reasons why he used it so much.

Ray sighed. "Okay, in simplest terms, when you take something like wood and heat it, the chemical bonds that make it wood begin to break. If these broken bonds find an agent that can bind with them to make oxygen, we get sustainable combustion. In other words a fire. These agents, oxidisers, can also increase the positive charge of an element by removing electrons. Basically, Humbaba fed on the positive charge of our proton packs to fuel his own abilities."

"So every time we zap him he gets stronger?" Winston demanded.

Egon sighed. "Unfortunately, yes."

"So we can just reverse polarity?" Peter asked hopefully.

"Well, yes. We could." Ray looked unhappy. "The trouble is that Humbaba is basically like most other ectoplasmic entities we face. He's composed of negatively charged ectoplasm except when he has physical form, in which case, we'd need the atomic destabiliser. It's just that ... well, he's not in physical form but he's hiding in a physical object. His power is protecting his ... his ..."

"Husk?" Egon suggested.

"Husk. Yeah, thanks Egon," Ray turned back to Peter. "So, basically, we have to get him out of his husk, then we can trap him as normal but because he converts our streams into his own firepower, we're actually being less effective than normal and he's being more resistant than normal."

"So ... we're talking about a creature we _are_ hurting but who gains his power through the pain we cause?" Winston asked.

"Sort of, yes." Ray sighed.

"You'd think a masochistic god actually wouldn't be too upset we've made firewood out of his forest," Peter mused distantly.

"Well, he is. And what's worse is that he's ... well, he's a god, Peter. Look what it took to destroy Gozer. Look what we went through to fight Tiamat - we had Marduk's help against Tiamat. Another god. And he died in the process!"

There was absolute silence in the room. "So ... how are you going to defeat him?" Lenny asked eventually.

Ray and Egon exchanged an uneasy look. "Well, if we can get him out of the husk, we're going to have to give it everything we've got and try and overload him so he can't use our weapons against us. That means boosting the equipment, using the cannons on Ecto-1 and Ecto-2 and crossing streams." Ray said slowly.

They all waited, expecting him to continue but he didn't. He looked exhausted. "That's it, guys. That's the plan."

"_That's_ the plan?" Winston shot Egon an incredulous look. The physicist sighed unhappily. "Oh man, we are so dead."

Lenny expression immediately became suspicious. "We are? Why?"

"It's _bad_," Winston told him with heart-felt emphasis.

"How do we get him out of the husk? Atomic destabiliser?" Peter asked.

"A single atomic destabliser alone won't have the power we need." Ray was chewing his lip in thought.

"What about the wind shield?" Winston asked.

Ray looked at Egon, who sighed. "I don't know," the physicist confessed.

"You don't know?" Peter asked. "Why not?"

Egon looked reproachful. "As I said when we first learned the identity of our opponent, it doesn't make sense for him to have the ability to control both fire and air. The connection between our attempts to stop him and his increase in power is now established but there is no apparent link between him and the wind shield."

"Can't we overload it like we did before?"

"The power we would require might destroy what we are trying to save, Peter." Egon considered for a moment. "We _do_ have the option of setting our proton packs to overload but in that event, I would recommend against doing it in Brooklyn. If it's a decision we take, we can choose where the confrontation takes place and I would suggest making it somewhere people don't usually live."

"Overload the proton packs?" Peter sighed. "That's your plan, Egon? I know we call you and Ray the mad scientists but guys, you're really scaring me here."

"Didn't you say the force of the explosion would destroy a quarter-mile radius?" Winston asked.

The Mayor's jaw dropped. "You are _not_ blowing up my city!"

"We could set up in Central Park," Ray suggested. "That's got the space we need to limit the damage to the rest of the city, if we can get it evacuated," he looked hopefully at Lenny, who stared back at him in stunned disbelief.

"Hey, hold up a minute, Ray!" Winston protested. "What's the plan here? Move Humbaba to Central Park and rig the place to blow in a nuclear explosion that you _hope_ will destroy him?"

"That's Plan B," Egon said. "Plan A is to use the proton packs and cannons to cross streams."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?" Peter asked, for once united with the Mayor in his disbelief.

"How are you going to get Humbaba there?" Winston asked. "The wind shield doesn't make it easy to dig him up."

"We need to find a way to entice him there." Egon replied.

There was a sudden silence. "Go there himself?" Peter sounded incredulous. "As in _wake him up_?!"

"Yes, Peter." Egon's voice was even and precise.

"Egon, you're trying to pull some kind of practical joke here, right? Isn't waking up a god we can't kill when _asleep_ a bad, _bad_ plan?"

"The force we need to generate to cause significant impact to the wind shield would damage a densely populated portion of the city. Then we would be required to repeat that same force when confronting Humbaba directly. We have a choice, Peter, one explosion or two," he turned suddenly and looked directly at the Mayor. "Which option would you prefer?"

"That ... that's the choice you're giving me to get rid of this demon from my city?" Lenny's face turned beet red. "Blow the place up once, possibly twice, with a nuclear bomb in Central Park? Are you crazy or do you think I'm just stupid? Get the hell out of my office!"

"Is there an echo in here or is that just the axe in my head?" Peter muttered under his breath. It was frustrating to fight the Mayor's ingrained mistrust of them every time they needed his help but this time he really couldn't blame the man for his reaction. The psychologist wasn't sure whether his headache now was from the strain of the past few days, the fact he was dealing with the Mayor or that he felt he had the responsibility to try and argue their point convincingly when even he wasn't sure of its merit.

Egon had been right. Not only did the Mayor hate this plan but Peter hated it too. Unfortunately, he really couldn't think of any other options left to them. Swallowing back his unease, his doubts, his fears and mentally telling his headache to put up or shut up, he spread his hands and smiled easily. "You have to admit, Lenny. Egon's got a point. You really want to explain to your voters why you allowed the destruction of residential areas when we had an option that could allow homes and livelihoods to be saved?"

"Saved?" the Mayor looked incredulous. "You come in here telling me the only way to stop this ... this ..."

"... Deranged, homicidal deity ..." Ray offered sympathetically.

"_Demon _..." the Mayor glared at Ray, who winced. "Is to set off nuclear explosions in the middle of the city and then talk about _saving_ New York?! In case you didn't hear me the first time, I'll say it again - are you insane or am I just stupid?!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw Egon push his glasses up his nose. The emphatic punch to that gesture galvanised the psychologist into action before the physicist could respond honestly to the rhetorical question.

Slipping an arm around the Mayor's shoulders, he turned him away from Egon slightly. No matter how bad the plan, now that Egon had put it forth, the physicist would defend it to the death. It wasn't scientific but Egon's pride sometimes demanded nothing less.

"Lenny, you know as well as we do what's at stake here and we know that most people in this rat-hole of a city don't give a damn about anything but what hits them in the pocket ..."

"Look, Venkman, I've been dealing with you for ..."

"The question ..." Peter continued smoothly as if the Mayor hadn't interrupted. "... you need to ask yourself is: what damage will they _think _hits their wallet the hardest? Repairing Brooklyn where they have their homes, schools, neighbours, friends, family ... or repairing a single, _impersonal _park they might only visit once a week or once a month?"

"Venkman ..."

"Because you have to face facts here, Lenny. We're dealing with the kind of tree-hugger that gives environmental activists a bad name. If he gets loose, he won't be spray-painting "Treez Rule Da Urth!" across inner-city walls - he'll be ripping out the city hall to plant the next Mrs Treebeard and using the Empire State Building as a kiddies climbing frame for the next generation of Ents-from-Hell."

"Good God, man! What on Earth are you babbling on about!" The Mayor finally yelled in exasperation. "This is my damn office, at least give me the courtesy of being allowed to speak in it!"

"Oh, sorry, Mr. Mayor. Please ... you were saying?" Peter politely stepped back and shoved his hands into his pockets to keep them from balling into fists. He was feeling sluggish today and his headache was actually getting worse. Through force of will, he refrained from sighing loudly. Maybe he should have paid attention to the doctor after all and refrained from touching the caffeine for a while.

The Mayor glowered at him, as if trying to work out whether Peter was insulting him or mocking him. It had to be one of them because both men shared a mutual hatred of each other so respect was out of the question.

"I was saying ..." he glared at Peter, then turned his attention on all the Ghostbusters. "... that you need to come up with a better plan. I'm not going to allow you to blow up New York!"

"There is no other plan." Egon was starting to sound impatient. "We've already told you that."

"I don't give a damn, Spengler. You find another way because hell'll freeze over before I agree to this insanity!"

"Fine." Egon turned on heel and started for the door.

"Uh.. Egon?" Winston asked quietly.

"And just where do you think you're going?" Lenny demanded.

"I've got an experiment measuring the visual turbidity of _Rhizopus nigricans_ sporangial hyphae that could benefit from my presence," the frost in Egon's voice almost froze the room. "Once Humbaba has finished destroying New York, I'll reconsider picking up my proton pack. I won't need to worry about blowing up the city at that point. There won't be one left."

"Egon, wait!" Ray exclaimed, leaping forward but the physicist had already stalked out of the room, the door slamming back into place missing Ray's face by inches.

For a moment, everyone stared at the door. "Okay, what was that?" Winston asked mildly.

"Maybe one of us should go after him," Ray suggested uneasily. "Janine?"

The secretary was already on her feet and moving towards the door before Ray addressed her but she stopped when Peter firmly laid a hand on the handle and shook his head at her.

"Leave him to cool down." Peter said shortly, turning back to the Mayor, who was staring at the door with a slack jaw. "Lenny," he said pleasantly. "Egon may not have worded it _exactly _how I would have but he's right. There aren't any options here. We have to throw more power at Humbaba than Humbaba can deal with. The less people that get hurt, the better and the safest place to do that is in Central Park."

"Do you have _any_ idea how hard it will be to evacuate Central Park?" Lenny demanded.

"Look man, I don't know what to tell you," Winston broke in quickly. "We're giving you the easy option - control over the location we confront this demon-god in. If you leave it too long, we won't even have that much going for us!"

"How long?" the Mayor asked.

"Three days? Give or take." Ray said quietly.

Lenny stared at him. "So, in three days, this ... thing in Brooklyn will wake up and destroy the city?"

"Every city on Earth. He wants his forest back." Ray clarified.

The Mayor's eyes narrowed. "And to destroy it, you want to wake it up now, lure it to Central Park and blow it up?"

"Basically, yes."

"But you can't guarantee this plan will work?"

"No, we can't. We can only promise to do everything in our power to try."

"And for the sake of clarification, tell me again what happens if you fail."

"Humbaba wipes out humanity and starts again with birds and bees," Peter said bluntly.

The Mayor's shoulders slumped. "Alright. We'll try and get Central Park cleaned out. Make sure you get that thing into the park. I want my city in one piece for as long as possible."

"Try to hurry, Mr. Mayor. Humbaba won't wait for us. We will have to act when he's awake regardless of what's going on in the park then," Ray told him.

The Mayor sighed wearily. "In that case, get out of here. Do your job and I'll do mine," he turned away from them and moved back to his desk. Ray was the only one to glance back as they left and the sight gave him pause. The Mayor sagged into his seat looking older and more tired than the Ghostbuster could ever remember seeing him and for the first time, the engineer found himself sympathising with the man. As hard as it was to be a Ghostbuster, he was very glad not to be Lenny right now. With a last sad shake of his head, he closed the door behind him and left the Mayor alone to his troubles.


End file.
